


Ravdak

by Temve



Series: Irdakverse [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clones, Horror... it's Halloween?, Irdak - Freeform, M/M, The Force Ships It, Zabraks (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:48:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27050695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Temve/pseuds/Temve
Summary: Master Kenobi had honestly not expected that having more Qui-Gon added to his life was going to spell trouble. Seeing as he was already living with 68% Qui-Gon.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Other(s), Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi/Other(s)
Series: Irdakverse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974295
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	1. Eddies

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to _Irdak_. In my made-up Zabrak language, where “Irdak” means “confluence”, “Ravdak” is “undertow/rip current”. Yes, we are in less calm waters here.
> 
> The poem quoted throughout is Peter Hammill’s _Now Lover_ , which is actually a song; while his music is an acquired taste, the lyric definitely stands alone as poetry.
> 
> As with _Irdak_ , the pairing tagging is my feeble attempt at reflecting the fact that Irdak is not-quite-Qui but also definitely not just "Other".
> 
> Epic thanks to Ell for letting me run off with Irdak for so many nights in a row (trust me dear, I can understand the desire to hit him with a rock sometimes), and to tornado_fox for being my cheering squad, purveyor of art (here is her [Tumblr](https://ins0mnia-dreams.tumblr.com/) and [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/ins0mnia/posts)), and asker of all the right questions.
> 
> The story picks up the day after the end of _Irdak_.

“Hello handsome.”

Obi-Wan looked up from the document he was studying and couldn’t help the smile that stole onto his lips. As per usual, Irdak had come in directly from his shift at the Temple’s droid repair facility, and as per usual, his mode of dress was best described as a mode of undress, at least by Jedi standards.

He had his sleeves rolled up past his elbows, brown-patterned arms on full display, and the front closure of his tunic so loosely tied that almost the entire circle design at the center of his chest tattoo was legible as well, and to top it all off, he had his dreads piled on top of his head in a messy bun. 

A smear of black grease ran from the bridge of his nose to the center of one cheek.

“Good day at work?” Obi-Wan hazarded. These days, Irdak showing up decidedly dishevelled and with evidence of actual droid maintenance on his skin meant that he’d advanced further along his chosen career path, although the front desk was apparently fighting tooth and nail to keep him customer-facing. Privately, Obi-Wan suspected that deliberately _looking_ like a droid mechanic was Irdak’s way of ensuring he’d be treated like one. 

It had gained him the attention of Set Anarra, one of the oldest and most experienced mechatronics experts of the Temple. And one of the grumpiest.

“Mostly,” Irdak replied with a grin. “Master Set called me a spice bun.”

“That’s lamentable.”

“Exactly. Especially given that she has exactly zero data on the coloration of my buns and consequently got it quite conclusively wrong.”

Obi-Wan snorted. Good to know that the droid repair shop was at the very least not privy to the tattoo designs surrounding his lover’s shapely backside and leaving the actual, uh, buns in their natural ivory color.

“You must admit though,” Obi-Wan continued pensively, “that with your general coloring and your hair twisted up like that, the resemblance is uncanny. Not to mention the, uh, icing on your nose.”

Obi-Wan was halfway to indicating the location of the smear on Irdak’s face by pointing a finger at his own nose when Irdak’s playful swat batted his hand out of the way and the young mostly-dressed apprentice droid mechanic flopped down on the couch next to him, smelling of sweat and warmth and droid lubricants.

Obi-Wan fought the urge to tell him to wash his hands at least. It didn’t require much of an ear for Temple gossip to be aware that Irdak had quickly built a reputation not just as the droid shop’s resident ray of sunshine but also single-handedly caused the corners of said shop’s customer waiting area to play host to assorted Padawan blushes belonging to anyone sexually compatible with humanoid males.

And yet, every night that Obi-Wan was actually home, he would come home to Obi-Wan and direct that sun-level energy solely at him. 

Obi-Wan hadn’t thought it possible that anything could be more exhausting and at the same time more rewarding than living with Qui-Gon Jinn had been. He’d been proven wrong. By someone who was, not to put too fine a point on it, genetically 68% Qui-Gon Jinn, the rest being made up of Zabrak genetic strains that meant the adorable frown line that currently resided between his brows also resided between two vestigial horns, tiny versions of the three larger crown horns high on his forehead.

“So… I have a question… about last night.” Irdak’s voice was soft and low, uncertainty weighing its usual lilt down.

Obi-Wan put his datapad away and nodded at him to continue. 

“That voice that we both heard… was that…”

Obi-Wan sighed. He’d been thinking of little else all day either. “It may have been,” he hazarded. “Though I can’t see how that’s even possible. I mean, I saw him die. I was there.”

The soft hum from Irdak was more of a question than an acknowledgment, and his face made it abundantly clear that he was out of his depth.

Obi-Wan’s footing, all told, wasn’t that sure either.

“And while we say a dead Jedi becomes one with the Force,” he continued, “what we mean by that is that… well, they become one with the Force. Which is pretty much the opposite of, well, remaining one with oneself. It shouldn’t be possible for a Jedi to retain any aspect of their personality after they pass into the Force. And it never has been.”

“Hm… “ Irdak was silent for a few long moments, clearly mulling over this aspect of Jedi lore. 

“What gets me though,” he said finally, “is that I heard him too. Or anyway, I heard someone that wasn’t me and wasn’t you, calling your name. And I’m pretty sure there was nobody else in the room. And it wasn’t Anakin’s voice.”

Obi-Wan nodded. “I agree. It _sounded_ like Qui-Gon, but I have a hard time explaining how it could possibly be.” He sighed. “As a matter of fact, I have asked to speak to Master Yoda about this.”

Irdak’s eyebrows rose. For all that he hadn’t had any personal dealings with the revered and diminutive Master yet, Yoda’s reputation had made it into his sphere of influence ages ago. Which it would, given that Yoda was his beloved’s great-grandmaster. 

Although he suspected that last part was actually true of most of the Jedi in this Temple, given Yoda’s age.

“You have been summoned to the swamp monster’s den?” he asked, amusement lightening his voice again.

Obi-Wan blinked, taken aback. “Is that what your spice-loving coworkers call him?”

“Yep,” Irdak replied. “Will you need a bodyguard?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Well,” Irdak continued with a smirk, moving over to straddle Obi-Wan’s thighs and crowd into his space as much as possible, which was a lot given his height. “I would recommend making sure your body is well guarded anyway.”

When no objection was forthcoming from Obi-Wan, he turned on his full droid-service charm. “I could perform a free check-up for you while you wait?”

“Irdak.” Obi-wan’s voice was warm with equal parts exasperation and arousal. “Really, I have to be up early tomorrow.”

“I’ll be happy to make it quick, Master Kenobi.”

***

“Master Yoda, believe me, I would have been the first to conclude it was a hallucination. But we both heard it.”

“Both?” Yoda’s ears twitched. Despite the early hour, the old Master was annoyingly alert.

“Well, Irdak and I both heard it at the same time.”

“Irdak?” A small green frown. “Possible it is that he heard what you heard, _because_ you heard?”

“Not really, Master Yoda.” Obi-Wan sighed. “While his Force sense is very much a force to be reckoned with, he lacks the focus to form a directed bond. Actually, he was quite disappointed to find that avenue was closed to him when he first got here and saw what the other Jedi were doing with their minds.”

“Meditate, does he?”

“Barely. I mean, yes he does, but often more to keep me company than to sink himself into the Force. He says that that sort of immersion only works for him with me around to anchor him. The Force is like an ocean to him, and he’s not yet learned to swim.”

“Hmmm… when speak to you, this… apparition did. Doing what, you were?”

Obi-Wan blushed. 

Yoda nodded encouragement. “Tell me, you can, Grandpadawan.”

“We were… uh, communing physically.”

“Aaah.” That seemed to satisfy Yoda immensely, which made Obi-Wan even more uncomfortable. “Memory, this may have been.”

“Master, Irdak _has_ no memory, least of all of Qui-Gon. The Healers have spent his first few months at Temple poking and prodding at him to access it, but… it looks like Zan Arbor did a frighteningly good job wiping it.”

“Not _his_ memory,” Yoda waved a claw dismissively. “Or yours. _Force_ memory. Let me see… poetry, your Master loved, yes?”

“Y… yes.” Obi-Wan wasn’t sure at all where this was going. “I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything,” he hazarded, knowing full well that this kind of reasonable objection was futile in the face of Master Yoda’s grim determination to make a point, no matter how outlandish.

Yoda’s voice had fallen into a singsong, and, what was more outlandish to Obi-Wan’s ears, his grammar had fallen… apart. Into regular patterns.

“In the here and now / Although completely different people / In the moments / before and after having sex / we are time-locked / so you see each time we touch / we did so in the past / slicing through time in a perfect curve.”

_Poetry_ , Obi-Wan thought. _What on Coruscant was that supposed to mean?_

“Frown you should not at Master Pjah-Mil’s writings,” Yoda chided gently. “Know Qui-Gon loved his work, I do. Shared it with you, he never did?”

“Not that I remember… not this one anyway.” He blushed slightly at his memories of himself as a young man haughtily arguing the merits of reading factual matter such as history or physics over poetry. Of course Qui-Gon had just responded with his customary raised eyebrow and dropped the subject… for a while.

“Regardless,” Yoda continued. “School of thought there is about Force connections being strongest in the moments before and after climax. Much documented research, as you can imagine, there has not been. Poetry, though… much poetry there is. Force memory, this could have been.”

“Like… Qui-Gon giving his blessing?” Obi-Wan’s eyes grew large.

“Your interpretation, that is.” 

Yoda’s expression made it quite clear that his interpretation, it was not. “Meditate on this, you should. Require Qui-Gon’s blessing, you do?” he asked, head cocked to one side.

“Well, I mean… “ Obi-Wan fidgeted like a youngling. Definitely not the mature Jedi Master he was supposed to be. “I’ve essentially bonded myself to… someone else,” he finished lamely.

“Someone else, Irdak is,” Yoda agreed. “Mostly. Trouble you, this does?”

Obi-Wan snorted. “Attachment is not something I was raised to be comfortable with, Master. And… Qui-Gon was my first love.”

“Passed into the Force, he has,” Yoda said quietly. “Love the Force, you do?”

“Y... yes. I suppose. I haven’t really thought of it as ‘love’ as such.”

“Meditate on it, you should. Perhaps both of you.”

“I will try.”

The ‘harrumph’ coming from Yoda was weapon-level, and Obi-Wan mentally kicked himself for walking into the trap like a green apprentice.

Then, he couldn’t help smiling despite himself. “I _will_. Thank you, Master Yoda.”

“Love you back, it will.”

***

Obi-Wan had toyed with the idea of checking a file of Master Pjah-Mil’s poetry out of the Archives, but a curious Irdak had rightly asked where, if Master Jinn’s love of old books and their contents was anywhere near as real as Obi-Wan made it out to be, his copy of said poetry would be kept. It might be annotated, he had hazarded, and Obi-Wan couldn’t fault his beloved for wanting to catch a glimpse of his… original’s handwriting.

Of course there was the box of Qui-Gon’s personal belongings, a treasure heavy with longing and memory and usually kept shoved in the back of Obi-Wan’s storage closet. He hadn’t opened it in years, but Irdak’s good-natured curiosity made it hard for him to come up with a reason not to. 

For all that Irdak seemed a person entirely unto himself, content with what little information he had about his origins and the way he came to be, it might do him good to establish at least an intellectual connection to the man he was… derived from. The man whom he, despite everything, reminded Obi-Wan of on a daily basis.

Also, there was a slight chance that reading poetry would help him refine his chaotic-good Force connection and shape him somewhat. Obi-Wan loved him dearly but it was hard to overlook sometimes that despite his 20 standard years, Irdak often managed to be considerably less mature than Anakin. 

And that was saying something. 

The content of the box was familiar enough to Obi-Wan, but seeing Irdak carefully dig through its jumbled treasures gave Obi-Wan a shadow of a new perspective. _Ray of light indeed._

There were, of course, the inevitable rocks, and Irdak’s face when he found the first Force-sensitive one after a series of merely interesting or pretty ones made Obi-Wan smile in reflection. 

“It’s… buzzing. Not in my ears, or in my fingertips, but… in there.” Irdak gestured vaguely in the direction of his hearts with his free hand while squeezing the unassuming bluish rock in his other one. “What _is_ that?”

“That, my dear, is your Force sense interacting with a Force-sensitive rock.”

Irdak raised his eyebrows and made a long face as if Obi-Wan had just told him the sort of thing you tell the smallest of initiates. Then again, he couldn’t deny that he was feeling something, and that it came from the rock, and that it was not entirely unlike the feeling he got all over his skin when he made love to Obi-Wan.

“My Force bugs like this one, huh?”

“Evidently. Which stands to reason since they’re… well, they’re essentially Qui-Gon’s and he picked this one up.”

“He picked this up too,” Irdak continued, lifting a slender cloth-wrapped package out of the box and blowing the dust off it. “Can I…”

Obi-Wan nodded cautiously. He knew what was in the wrapping of course, and it pained him less than the rock had. Oddly.

Irdak gingerly peeled back the layer of fabric, revealing a thick strand of dark brown hair held together at irregular intervals with metal beads clamped around it. It was neither plaited like the braids he’d seen on Anakin or on the blushing Padawans at work, nor was it felted like his own locks. It was just smooth, long, and limp, and unlike the rock, it did nothing to Irdak’s Force sense except imbue it with a dusting of Qui-Gon. 

“He’s touched this. But it’s not… his?”

“No,” Obi-Wan agreed. “It’s a memento of someone he loved, though. Someone who has long since passed into the Force.”

“Oh.” Irdak gently placed the strand of hair back in its cloth wrapping and laid it aside gently, as if handling a dead butterfly.

Reaching a careful hand back into the box, he closed his eyes and let his Force sense guide him.

“I think I’ve found it,” he announced triumphantly, producing a small volume bound in greenish fabric. “This one is positively bathed in Qui vibes. Quibes? Is that a thing?”

When Obi-Wan did not respond, he decided to focus on the object at hand instead. Its cover was threadbare to the extent that the author and title printed on the spine had been all but worn away, but the entire outside of the book positively flickered with the imprint of Qui-Gon’s Force signature. 

“He must have held this one a lot.”

When no objection came from Obi-Wan, Irdak took the book between his flat palms, took a deep breath, and let it fall open.

There were no annotations on the page, and the print was a perfectly legible slightly antiquated font, but Obi-Wan gasped in amazement anyway.

The exact lines that Yoda had quoted at him were staring him in the face. Out of order, no less, because apparently one could not trust the old troll to say _anything_ in the right order.

_Now Lover_ , the title across the top of the page proclaimed. As if the poem was _about_ Qui-Gon, the lover of all things now.

“This the one?” Irdak asked softly.

“Yes.”

They read together in silence, and more than once Obi-Wan was almost sure he heard the ancient Master’s words in Qui-Gon’s voice. 

_In the here and now  
Although completely different people  
In the moments before and after having sex  
We are time-locked  
Cracked, forgotten statues, we are strangled in the undergrowth  
Lost in ancient magic, we are motion, we are wonderful flow  
We are time-locked  
Unknowing of the code  
But addicted to the pulse_

“Unknowing of the Code,” Irdak observed. “I can see how that would have appealed to your contrary Master.”

Obi-Wan snorted. “Knowing of the Code and dismissing it was more his style.” _Especially when it came to the moments before and after having sex._ “You’re not hearing his voice though, right now?”

“No,” Irdak answered. “Just the vague feeling of Force presence that I get with you too.”

Obi-Wan nodded. “That is to be expected.”

“I would like to read more of this though,” Irdak said, eyes bright and alert. “Can I take this to bed tonight?”

“Should I be jealous?” Obi-Wan quipped.

“Should _you_ be jealous?” Irdak barked out a bright laugh. “ _I’m_ not the one chatting with my dead lover via Force comm.”

“Shut up, spice bun boy.”

“Make me.”

And Obi-Wan did as best he could, with a kiss that almost made the book drop from Irdak’s hand.


	2. Turbulence

“So… meditate, we must?” Irdak would have been the first to admit that his Yoda impersonation was flawed, not least because being tall, humanoid and handsome put you at a distinct disadvantage in that respect. It nevertheless managed to get a smile out of Obi-Wan.

“We _will_ ,” Obi-Wan corrected gently. “Think of it as getting familiar with the Force, letting it flow through you in a way that feels good and helpful rather than chaotic.” He smiled. “It’s like learning to swim, Irdak - once you’ve mastered it, you won’t remember how arcane it once seemed. And I’ll be by your side. Always.”

Irdak nodded slowly, then reached out a hand for Obi-Wan’s shoulder and found himself enveloped in a hug, felt his shoulders relax in a way that he hadn’t noticed they’d tensed.

“You speak skin language,” he murmured against the side of Obi-Wan’s neck. “Feels good.”

Obi-Wan broke the hug and took a step back to survey the now visibly more relaxed form of his lover. “Your sash, please.”

Irdak raised an eyebrow, then blinked incredulously, a nervous laugh bubbling up in his throat. “Are we sure that this is not the start of a wonderful kinky adventure, Master Jedi?” He thrust his hips forward provocatively, crossing his wrists in front of his groin.

“It is not,” Obi-Wan replied evenly. “Your sash is merely the most comfortable thing I could come up with for a blindfold, which is commonly used in beginner meditation if you don’t have a darkened room at your disposal. Also, I have it on relatively good authority that sensory deprivation is not one of your kinks…” Obi-Wan leveled a piercing gaze at his young lover as if to ascertain that was still the case, “so this might just work as intended for once.”

“Can’t say having my senses taken away from me does anything other than irk me,” Irdak agreed. “Your hands on me, on the other hand…”

“That is not the purpose of this exercise,” Obi-Wan said softly but firmly. “So I’d appreciate it if you kept Insatiable Irdak under control as much as possible.”

Irdak hummed assent as he unbuckled his belt and unwound his sash, letting his tunic fall open in as innocent a way as he could muster. He folded the thin fabric lengthwise, then laid it end to end and presented it to Obi-Wan draped across both open palms as if handing over a valuable artefact, sketching a bow as he did so.

“Initiate Irdak at your service, Master.”

Obi-Wan couldn’t help smiling at the impish earnestness in his lover’s face, and for the hundredth time wondered if that was what Qui-Gon had been like as a young man. _Most likely yes_.

“I want you to be as comfortable physically as you can, Irdak. Find a position that your body can stay in for a long time without any part getting achy or numb. I want you to be able to lose track of your body so do whatever it takes to achieve that. You can sit or lie down or anything in between as long as you’re comfortable.”

“Can I take these off?” Irdak gestured vaguely at his pants and tunic. “Or would that be too much of a distraction?”

That little huff of breath was almost a Master Kenobi sigh, but he caught himself just in time. “I think I can manage to resist the charms of your skin for the duration of one meditation session, Impeccably Inscribed Irdak. Besides, I can look away, and in case you’re wondering, we will not be touching. Make yourself as comfortable as you can _on your own_.”

“Hmm.” A few permutations of couch cushions later, Irdak appeared to have found his comfort zone, draped on the floor with his head resting against the seat of the couch and his back supported by a cushion squished between him, the couch, and the floor. “Do your worst, Obi-Wan.”

Of course Irdak’s lips parted most enticingly as Obi-Wan wrapped the soft, Irdak-scented sash around his lover’s eyes, and of course Obi-Wan had to tamp down a spike of arousal at how his incorrigible lover was evidently able to turn the most peripheral of sensations into pleasure. Well aware of Irdak’s tendency to fidget and wriggle, he tied the sash at the back of his head underneath where Irdak kept his hair bound up in his customary high tail, then wrapped the fabric around the tail and tied it again, leaving the rest to trail down among the bead-adorned dreads. 

“There. Still comfortable?”

A soft purr was the only thing forthcoming from Irdak, and Obi-Wan could have sworn that if he hadn’t been blindfolded, his eyes would have slid shut in a most seductive manner.

“Good.” Obi-Wan scooted to the other end on the couch and made himself comfortable as well, tucking his bare feet under him. “Now let us focus on our breathing for a few minutes. Let the air flow into your body, spread itself around your entire body, and flow out of you again. In through the nose, out through your mouth, in an endless cycle of flow.”

Obi-Wan kept an eye on Irdak for the first minute or so, then tore his gaze away from the gentle rise and fall of that enticingly tattooed chest, focusing his own energy inward. This was about the Force, not his base human instincts. _And about him learning to swim in the Force, just like I’ve had to learn to swim in… him._

Obi-Wan let his mind fall slack, conscious thought slipping away on the current of the Force flowing through him. He pictured it as a blue-green stream, darker blues weaving through the current, warm and buoyant, holding him up, weightless. 

The lack of a formal training bond meant that he actually had to put these images in words for once, to plant them in Irdak’s mind, and he did so as best he could, in soft quiet words, listening for Irdak’s breathing, opening himself to the flickering chaotic Force aura that enveloped Irdak, so much like Qui-Gon’s and yet so unlike him, so uncontrolled and vibrant.

No wonder the boy likened it to a wild ocean.

***

Breath flowing in, breath flowing out, out into the roiling blues and greens pummelling his back with sensation, lapping over his chest in flickering playful waves, never quite enough to drown, but never quiet enough to just float on top of… it was as if his skin was thirsty, wanting those sweet enveloping Force currents to take him and pull him under, and yet knowing that breath was a necessity that kept him anchored to this life.

That Obi-Wan’s voice was a necessity that kept him anchored to this life. Floating above him and reverberating deep in his bones, deep within him where the little Force bugs were crawling through his bloodstream, placed there by some maker that he’d only heard the full name of once. 

The voice held him up, made his arms buoyant when they were too slender, too weak to swim this ocean of infinity, made him solid when the currents of blue and green and indigo and Now and Then and Before threatened to swallow and dissolve him. Him, the man with no Before, the man with a name given only by that voice.

A name that meant ‘confluence’.

Underneath him, the blue and the green and the indigo roiled and echoed, and he felt his body rise, float above it all, his mind’s eye casting a full-body glance down at himself, down at where he fit in to the shimmering currents, the Force washing around him, over him, through him, as if he wasn’t there - no, as if he _was_ there but no longer distinct from the currents and eddies. As if he was flowing _with_ them, a strand in the joyous turbulence, a flicker of light in the explosion of sheer life-affirming madness that filled his body and made his skin itch from the inside, desperate for touch.

He dimly registered some of the currents were leaking out from the corners of his eyes, and it felt freeing, a small valve for the overwhelming need he felt to share himself with this mind-bursting sensation. To share himself with Obi-Wan, with the voice that kept him safe in this turbulent stream of wonder, with the one who had bound up his eyes to keep the tears safe. With the one his entire skin itched to touch.

It took next to no effort to let the currents take him and roll him onto his side, buoy him up to where Obi-Wan was sitting, a bright beacon of light in the Force that required no eyes to see. Irdak could not remember ever feeling more enveloped in bliss than right there and then, stretched out naked on their couch, his head in Obi-Wan’s lap, hands stroking down Obi-Wan’s thighs, absorbing the muted energy seeping through his clothing into Irdak’s palms, feeding his thirsty skin.

There was balm to be had - he knew it dimly but was too far gone to ask, pleading mutely with hands and small nuzzles and soft noises, rubbing his face into Obi-Wan’s groin, the scent mingling with the full-body sensation of the blue and green and indigo still swirling around him and no, he did not want to open his eyes, so perfectly happy to be blindfolded and held and floated, gently caressed by the currents that were no less violent than they had been mere minutes ago but somehow more _harmonious_ , more in rhythm, more _with him_.

He did want to open his mouth though, to give expression to the joy he was feeling. Not in words, words were far beyond him still. What travelled on his breath were soft moans of bliss, sighs of perfect contentment, punctuated by the occasional hitching laugh when a particularly bright wave hit him and washed through him.

He also wanted, very, very, much, to open his mouth and gorge himself on Obi-Wan.

It was only natural, wasn’t it? To swim up to the surface of this maddening rush of energy and hold on to the first solid object at hand? To want to _consume_ , to stuff that delightful warm hard flesh into your mouth and _feed_ , feel its delicious weight on your tongue and swim in the brighter blue eddies that drifted downstream with foam crowns of Obi-Wan’s breathy moans. It was only natural, and it felt divine to breathe, to lick, to swell around the wonderful hard sensitive cock in his mouth, to absorb the sensation and feed it back into the current, his body a conduit of sheer maddening life, floating weightlessly in a sea of sensation.

He thought he heard a muffled moan somewhere in the distance, and he let it wash through him, let the wantonness of it carry and caress him, lighting up his skin from his toes to the roots of his horns to his mouth so full of Obi-Wan’s flesh and oh, this was where that moan was coming from, wasn’t it? It was his own, and he sent another one after it, and another as he felt the tingle of sensation sweep down his exposed flank, homing in on where his own body was bright and thick with sensation, and he hadn’t known how much he’d been craving the touch _there_ of all places until it enveloped him, closing the feedback loop, Obi-Wan’s answering moan vibrating up his spine, pushing him higher and making him suck the very life out of the cock in his mouth, breathing in the glorious brighter bluer rush that lit up the inside of his eyelids and there was no blindfold any more, he saw all right, saw the bright edges of lightning outlining the face with its smiling, crinkled eyes, saw the currents of Force coalescing into hair, hair so like Obi-Wan’s but not - longer, graying, soft, the eyes older and electric blue, a warped mirror image of his own, and he realized with a shock that sent sparks up his spine that he was looking, with his mind’s eye, at the face of Qui-Gon Jinn. 

And it was smiling at him. And there was no way, blindfold or not, that he could escape that smile that drifted deep into the bright blue currents that held him enthralled, bound him to Obi-Wan and fed him the sheer blinding pleasure of making love to that man.

As the wave crested over him, drowning him in a rush of desperate bliss, the blue smile eddied open and a voice that was too like his own and yet not enough like his own echoed in his head.

//Flow, Irdak.//

He wasn’t even sure he’d finished orgasming yet, and he definitely hadn’t caught his breath enough to yell at Obi-Wan, but he’d had the blindfold off and had sat halfway up before he had voice enough to say, “What in all the Sith hells was that?!”

Obi-Wan blinked, emerging from his own orgasm, his head still pillowed on Irdak’s thigh, a lazy smile stretched across his lips. “That was... you learning to swear like a proper Jedi?”

“Obi-Wan!” Irdak ripped at the sash where it was still tangled in his hair, itching to be free of it. “Don’t pretend you didn’t hear it! He said my _name_! How does someone who’s supposed to be dead even _know_ my name?” He tried and failed to take a calming breath, all effects of the meditation wiped away. “And he _looked at me_.”

Obi-Wan wrapped his arms around Irdak in a comforting hug. “He was smiling,” he said softly. “I think he likes that I’ve got you in my life. He said as much about me naming you.”

“ _Said_ as much?” Irdak blinked. “You mean you two talk?”

“Not exactly.” Obi-Wan sighed, running a soothing hand down Irdak’s back. “Two nights ago though… when you first heard him… that’s what I heard also. ‘You couldn’t have picked a better name, Padawan’, or something to that effect.” He leaned back to capture Irdak’s gaze. “It felt good.”

“I bet it did,” Irdak replied tonelessly. “I just don’t think I could compete with the ghost of a Jedi master.”

“It’s not a competition, Irdak. You’re here and now, alive and with me.” Obi-Wan pressed a kiss to Irdak’s lips. “And I am glad you are.”

The longer kiss that followed went some way towards easing the jittery knot in Irdak’s stomach, but it would be a long time until he’d fall asleep that night. Obi-Wan had given in to post-orgasmic exhaustion the moment he’d maneuvered both of them into the bedroom, and it was all Irdak could to to watch his beloved slumber peacefully in the hopes that some of that Sithdamned serenity would rub off on him. 

_I should sleep too. I mean, if he can sleep like this after being yelled at by the ghost of his former lover, then…_

First a voice, then a face. And evidently not just a hallucination, since they’d both seen it. The Force moves in inscrutable ways, they said. He didn’t like it one bit though that the Force apparition of Qui-Gon Jinn spoke to Obi-Wan more than he did to him. 

He didn’t like one bit that the Force apparition of Qui-Gon Jinn _existed_ ; not in body, sure, but in spirit. Which effectively reduced him, Irdak, to a body.

He was a good body, no doubt about that, but that was no longer enough for him. Not now that he’d given himself over to the currents that being near Obi-Wan set off in him. _That was the Force too, wasn’t it?_ It didn’t make sense. And he didn’t like it one bit. 

What was the Force thinking it was doing, luring him in with the promise of a home in Obi-Wan’s arms and then, once he was well and truly addicted, pulling the ground from under his feet and watching him flail in the rip current?

In the secondhand light filtering in through the blinds, Irdak saw that his arms were wrapped around Obi-Wan as they so often were when they were in bed together. Saw, with a shocking amount of distance, how those arms of his were a world apart from the arms Obi-Wan craved. Slimmer, less muscular, pale as bone and marked all over with the savage poetry of Zabrak tattoos. He tightened his embrace, and heard Obi-Wan snuffle quietly into the pillow without waking up. 

It was not a feeling he ever thought he’d experience, not given how his life so far had been a whirlwind of freely given physicality, followed by a whirlwind of freely given love. _Possessiveness_ , he supposed, _attachment_ , that was what it was, a desperate need to hold on to what he had and not let go, to _not_ go with the flow. 

What the fuck did that shiny blue ghost know about his life, anyway? What did he know about what he was breaking into, staking his claim on his old lover? Telling him, Irdak, _using his name_ , to flow?

_No, Qui-Gon Jinn. I am not letting go._

***

It was not yet morning when Irdak gave up attempting to sleep and instead leaned in to plant a line of kisses down the side of Obi-Wan’s neck. He had questions. He needed Obi-Wan, now.

“...mmmhtimeisit?” Under normal circumstances, the sleep-soaked warmth of Obi-Wan’s voice, combined with the mussed long hair and the lazy stretch that almost inevitably followed, would have been enough to fill Irdak’s hearts to overflowing, not to mention other parts of his body.

Now, in the small hours of morning, all of him was throbbing with the need to know.

“It’s not yet morning, love. I’m sorry. It’s… I couldn’t sleep.”

Obi-Wan blinked his eyes into shape and pushed himself up on one elbow to look at Irdak. “You look troubled, love. What’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter?” Irdak frowned. “You have to ask?”

Obi-Wan rubbed a hand across his own face, then reached out for Irdak’s, only to find himself touching empty air as Irdak pulled back. 

“It’s about Qui-Gon, isn’t it?” Obi-Wan’s voice was soft but not at all upset, and that somehow unsettled Irdak even more. _Like it wasn’t even a big deal._

“Yes,” Irdak replied tightly. “I never thought I’d hear myself say these words, but I don’t like this thing you two have going. And I know I’m being irrational, but… I mean, I believed you when you said you were mine.”

“I am,” Obi-Wan said softly. “Yours.” And those words, paired with the scent of sleep-heavy Obi-Wan and the slight scruff on his neck at this hour of the morning, only fuelled the need pooling deep within Irdak. A need that he had to tamp down ruthlessly, because he needed answers, answers that went beyond a simple, glib confession.

“You are,” Irdak repeated, as if to convince himself. “Like I am yours. Like you were his. But now, now that he is… now that he _is_ again… whose are you, Obi-Wan? Where is your heart?”

“Irdak.” This time he didn’t resist Obi-Wan’s hand as it touched his cheek, the fingertips that trailed up his temple into his hair. Fingertips that acknowledged the fact that there were _horns_ on that familiar path. “Irdak, this changes nothing about us. I love you.”

The silence hung heavy between them, and Irdak couldn’t find it in him to protest. The dam holding his bone-deep need in check was cracking.

“Irdak,” Obi-Wan said, “Qui-Gon is dead. He died years ago, and while I can't say I know what to make of the fact that he’s appearing to both you and me, he’s not here to steal me from you.”

“Oh, you know, do you?” The dam, as well as Irdak’s voice, was definitely cracking. “What else are you two talking about where I can’t hear?”

“That’s not… Irdak, that’s not it. Yes, I do hear him, perhaps more than you, but… I have decades of training in the Force. It makes sense.”

There was no way. No way this conversation could go on as it was, with Obi-Wan being cool and calm and rational when Irdak needed, _needed_ , answers in skin language. Hands had reached out and wrapped around Obi-Wan’s wrists before another syllable could be spoken, and Irdak was crushing Obi-Wan under him, his greater height giving him the advantage for once. There was not a whiff of _up_ in the way he was looking at Obi-Wan, eyes blazing.

“I was fucking _made_ for you, Obi-Wan. Literally.”

He ground his body into Obi-Wan, intent on crushing the breath out of him, on bringing out the truth. Needed Obi-Wan to moan for him, and only him.

“You gave me my name. You picked me up and ripped me out of my life and wrapped me up in you until I couldn’t breathe for sheer fucking happiness.”

Obi-Wan was silent, eyes wide. A hand reached for Irdak’s face in a mute attempt to make contact, but was swatted aside as Irdak’s body took over, chasing release, rearing up against his captive, his lover, his rock.

“I’m fucking addicted to you, Obi-Wan. Without you I’m a strung-out wreck, a whore with two empty hearts… without you, I’m a fucking _droid mechanic_!”

The last words were half-strangled, washed in tears and semen, seeping into Obi-Wan’s sleep shirt as he held on to his desperately sobbing lover, mutely, the language of hands echoing on Irdak’s trembling back in small circles.

When he opened his eyes, the first thing Irdak saw was the silhouette of a tall, sad robed figure in the corner of their room. He swatted at the image angrily and buried his face in Obi-Wan’s chest, beyond caring he’d leave bruises with his horns, leaking breath and tears and spit until sleep, finally, took him.

***

It didn’t hurt at all.

It smelled terrible though, as if there had been rot underneath them for years, eroding away at the roots until they fell free from his skull, leaving sad ovals of moist pink skin that stank.

His hair refused to cooperate. It would not grow that way, would not stay that way, would not cover the wounds where the horns had been.

Nothing hurt, not on his head.

Seeing his horns in his hands, three sad slivers of bone, hurt in his hearts more than he’d imagined possible.

When he woke up, he found his hands empty, his horns firmly rooted to his forehead, and his bed empty. Daylight was filtering through the blinds, and Obi-Wan was gone.


	3. Rip Current

“Hmm?” The monosyllabic greeting was as much owed to Yoda’s economical way with language as to the early hour of morning. When Obi-Wan immediately sat down on the floor to be eye-level with his great-grandmaster, barely inside the door, Yoda dug out a few more syllables.

“Emergency, this is?”

“Well… urgency, I would call it,” Obi-Wan replied cautiously. “I mean, nobody’s in immediate danger and I’m sure you could care less about my relationship issues at this point, but… Qui-Gon has made an appearance again.”

A deep sigh and an abbreviated clawed gesture beckoned Obi-Wan to continue while Yoda floated a teacup towards him and took a thoughtful sip.

“This time it wasn’t just the voice - I mean, we heard the voice too, and I can say with some certainty now that it was his. Would be able to say that even if it hadn’t come out of, well, Qui-Gon’s face.”

“Speak to you, he did?”

“Worse,” Obi-Wan replied. “Well, no. Perhaps better from where you are standing. He spoke to Irdak, telling him to go with the flow. The poor boy has been racked with jealousy since the incident. I hope he’s still asleep and not prowling the halls of the Temple looking for me, because if he is you might have some horns in your face any minute now.” He rubbed his own chest delicately. “He’s not taking it well… let’s just leave it at that. Like I said, I’m not here to burden you with my love life. But I thought you might want to hear about Qui-Gon.”

“Hear about him, I do,” Yoda answered slowly. “See for myself, I would need to.”

Obi-Wan blinked, then nodded. Of course. Even without as direct a connection to Qui-Gon as his, or Irdak’s, Yoda should be able to open himself to the Force enough to confirm what they had experienced.

A papery chuckle, and a clawed hand on his knee jerked Obi-Wan out of his thoughts.. “Concerned, you look, Obi-Wan. Worry, you should not. Need sexual climax for this, I do not.”

Obi-Wan had barely had time to register a properly affronted expression when he sensed Yoda sink himself into a meditation. No, that was definitely not the right word, and Obi-Wan himself had only experienced it up close one other time in his life. At the time, he’d likened Yoda’s descent into the currents of the Force to cannonballing into the ocean from a clifftop.

That image definitely still held true. Wiping metaphorical spray off his face, Obi-Wan cautiously followed.

What he found as he arrived, catching up with Yoda’s Force presence, put his mind at ease and at unease all at the same time. On the one hand, he was definitely not hallucinating - that was Master Qui-Gon Jinn, full-length, appearing just as he had looked when Yoda had last seen him in life. The Force apparition was a real thing, as far as those things could be called real. 

Yoda was clearly looking at it. At him. Communicating. 

A small lopsided smile and a duck of head as if to acknowledge, with one tiny flicker of physical movement, that a bow would be in order but a proper bow from Jinn’s height down to Yoda’s would take too long given the limited time they had. The Force glimmered with bright blue amusement, and Obi-Wan’s heart was full to bursting.

More than anything, he wished he had two, to hold all the feelings that were assaulting him.

 _Qui-Gon was back._ Just the reassurance of that, of how Qui-Gon had somehow managed to stay _Qui-Gon_ through his passing, was apt to overload lesser minds. Or hearts. The reassuring presence of some kind of Qui-Gon made Obi-Wan feel a full inch taller, more solid, more grounded. 

Acutely aware of how much he’d been missing that phantom hand holding him up, that hand that had always been there throughout his years with Qui-Gon, whether or not Qui-Gon himself was anywhere near. 

_I may be a lesser Jedi than I thought myself,_ he mused, _if he fills the empty space so easily._

//Padawan.// 

Obi-Wan peripherally noticed Yoda’s ears twitch in surprise as a pair of familiar brows thundered at him, now in blue rather than brown.

//Don’t you dare belittle yourself for what you’ve done.//

“I’m… sorry?” Obi-Wan hazarded, bewildered at the echo of his own voice in his head.

//And you can stop that too. We’ve been over this, Padawan.// 

And then the full intensity of an electric blue Jinn smile made Obi-Wan’s brain short-circuit.

//Good. Blast away those misplaced feelings of guilt while we’re at it. I love you, Padawan. And I love what you’ve done with your life.//

Obi-Wan had no idea what he must look like to his former Master’s spectral eyes but he was fairly certain there was a tear hanging in the corner of one of his own. He desperately tried to overlay gratitude, love, over the confusion he knew he was projecting.

The outburst of emotion appeared to have sapped some of the energy of the apparition too; Qui-Gon’s face felt fainter, less distinct. And engaged in extending a farewell to Master Yoda.

//speak more… all of us// 

That was the last thing Obi-Wan heard in that familiar voice before he found himself rudely slammed back into a gravity-prone body, slumped on the floor of Master Yoda’s quarters. 

He hadn’t thought it possible but Yoda appeared just that slight bit out of breath as he drew back his hand.

“See this, you did?” Yoda asked. “Last time you saw him?”

“In truth… no, Master. This was more vivid still. And… I’ve never had an actual conversation with him. He is getting... stronger?”

“Hmmm.” A long silence, then Yoda cocked his head at Obi-Wan, and what might have been the hint of a smile played around his gnarled lips. “Helpful, that was. Believably Jinn, that was.” Another long pause. “Promising, this is. Speak more, we should. All of us.”

“All of us?”

“Pretend you are stupid, you must not, Obi-Wan,” Yoda chided gently. “Your Irdak, he wants to meet also.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan sighed. “That would be the difficult part.”

“Hmm?”

“Irdak’s mind is still unfocused, Master. And, well, meditation with him often devolves into… sex.” Obi-Wan couldn’t help the blush that crept up his cheeks at how last night’s meditation session had ended.

“Speak with you through his body, he does?”

“Y-yes. I suppose.”

“Try meditating with someone else, maybe he should,” Yoda suggested. “Someone who is not you. Close to Anakin, he is?”

“They’re like brothers.” _Sometimes too much. Like having two teenage Padawans._

“Guess your thoughts, I can.” Yoda smirked. “Ask Anakin, you should. Strong in the Force, he is. Memory of Qui-Gon, he has. Good, friendly memory.”

“I will tr… I will, Master. Thank you.”

***

The currents were pummelling his back again, in the green and blue and indigo he knew they would be if he rolled over and looked into their depths. He could feel them welling up from the deep, jets and eddies and splashes coming at him - but he was solid.

He was solid, and he floated, arms stretched wide, palms down. Well, palm down. His other hand was holding on to Anakin’s, tightly. But he was breathing. Staying afloat. 

It was a beginning.

Irdak knew that if he allowed himself to be rolled over by the currents, he would see green and blue and indigo and likely more - luminous electric blue eyes - and he was not ready to seek those out and have his swimming lesson interrupted.

It was a beginning, and he gratefully resurfaced when it was over, letting go of Anakin’s hand and blinking briefly at the lack of wetness on his skin. 

“Thank you, brother,” he said softly. 

“Anytime,” Anakin replied with a smile. “I’m not really sure I’m your best choice, seeing as I don’t remember much about Master Qui-Gon, but at least… well, at least I’m not gonna make you want to jump my bones in the middle of everything so there’s probably some merit in that.” He grinned.

“No offence,” Irdak replied, his own smile a little shaky. “It’s not like you’re not an attractive human being, but you’ll always be safe from the attentions of this particular horny bastard. It’s bad enough that you have to put up with the noise.”

Anakin snorted in amusement. “Did he really call you a horny bastard when you first met?”

“I think that may have been our second meeting,” Irdak replied, grinning. “Of course, I spent much of the first one unconscious so I can’t vouch for your Master’s commentary at that point. But yes, that did come up.” He sighed and ran a hand into his hair, deftly bypassing the horns from lifelong practice. “I dreamed about them the other night, even.”

“About your horns?”

Irdak nodded. “Nightmare actually… I’ve never been more relieved to wake up and find them still attached.”

Anakin whistled through his teeth. “Interesting.”

Irdak frowned. “Didn’t feel interesting at the time, I can tell you.”

“So in your dream… your horns fell off?” Anakin hazarded.

Irdak nodded. “Not just like that either - it felt like they’d been rotting for years. They were utterly numb, which… no, they really aren’t, not the roots anyway.” He ran a finger along the bottom of one of his crown horns as if to reassure himself that they were still, in fact, quite sensitive at the root. “And there they were, in the palm of my hand. Stinking.”

Anakin nodded thoughtfully. “Fantastic timing, brother. I could have done with the story last month for my beginner psych class.” He snorted. “Looks like that archetype transcends at least a couple of species.”

Irdak said nothing, unwilling for the moment to admit he had no idea what Anakin was talking about.

“In humans it’s usually about teeth,” Anakin continued eventually. “That’s one of the big ones as far as nightmares go. There’s being late for your transport to Somewhere Important, there’s having to make a speech without your clothes on, and there’s losing your teeth.”

“What does it mean?” Irdak asked cautiously, not really sure he wanted to find out.

“Well, you know the expression ‘something’s got teeth’? That’s pretty much it - teeth are, at least in that school of thought, what you use to make your mark on the world. Chomp chomp. You tear your food up, you defend yourself, that sort of caveman shit. I assume Zabraks used to fight with their horns or something?”

“I’m not the greatest authority on that,” Irdak admitted, “but it’d be hard to imagine any other use for them really.”

“So when you dream about losing your teeth, you’re dreaming about losing your ability to do stuff. Apparently it used to be about ‘losing your virility’ but they don’t teach us that any more, except well, they teach us that that’s how they used to teach it so I don’t know… anyway, it’s not a man problem any more, it’s apparently a human problem. It’s a fear thing.”

Irdak nodded slowly. “And that’s why they make us meditate? Because they think that fear leads to the Dark Side?” He shook his head. “I’m not even sure where this Dark Side is. The Force seems pretty dark to me at times. All of it, I mean.”

“It is,” Anakin said simply. “It’s not as clean-cut as we liked to imagine when we were younglings. The Light and the Dark don’t do us the favor of splitting themselves down the middle with a visible seam to steer clear of. But really, Irdak, I don’t see you falling to the Dark any time soon. Not with your bright energy. Master Obi-Wan thinks the world of you, and that’s a fact.”

“Even with horns.”

“Even… oh. That’s what you’re thinking? That they make you look like that Sith who…”

“Killed the original love of his life.” Irdak’s tone was bitter. “Except not permanently, it seems.”

Anakin mulled that over, clearly weighing his words. “You should tell him. Tell him you’re worried. He… he wouldn’t want that to hang over you.” He looked Irdak straight in the eyes. “He _loves_ you. Even with the utilitarian training bond we have, and his formidable shields, I’d have to be purposely looking away every moment of my waking hours not to know that.”

“But is it _me_ he loves?”

“I don’t think any answer from me is going to be good enough for that, brother. If it helps, I can make myself scarce immediately after dinner, and you can ask? Again, I mean?”

Irdak reached for Anakin’s hand again and squeezed. “You’re the best, brother.”

Anakin smiled. “Not according to Master Obi-Wan. I think I may have been supplanted in that respect by a certain horny bastard.”

***

True to form, Anakin excused himself the minute the dishes were cleared, mumbling something about homework assignments. Alone at last in the common room of their quarters, Irdak caught one of Obi-Wan’s hands in his, marvelling again at how different they were in size, shape and coloring, and how perfectly they fit inside each other regardless.

He took a deep breath and looked Obi-Wan in the eye. “I’m worried about you,“ he said.

“Worried?” The tinge of amusement in Obi-Wan’s voice was unsettling. “I didn’t think Temple gossip was _that_ effective. Do the droid fixers know about our mission assignments within hours of us getting them these days?”

Irdak blinked, uncomprehending.

“Anyway,” Obi-Wan continued, the realization beginning to dawn that that was not what his lover was talking about. “It’s just a routine mission to knock some metaphorical sense into those Separatists before they get to uppity. We’re not expecting to even see armed conflict. But… that’s not what you’re worried about?”

“Didn’t even know about that.” The laugh sounded bitter. “Here I thought I was losing you and then you wander away from me on some Sithdamned mission the next day.”

“Losing me?” Obi-Wan frowned. “Love, is this about…”

“Yes.” A deep sigh. “Sorry. I just can’t let it go, and every new part of him that reappears feels like it’s taking a part of me away.” He was no longer looking at Obi-Wan, eyes downcast instead. “I had a nightmare about losing my horns. Felt like I was losing you too.”

Dimly, Irdak felt a hand tip his chin up. Felt the light emanating from those fingertips. Felt more than heard the words, and soaked them up with his entire being.

“Irdak. I _love_ you. You are the one in my life now. The only life I have. And there is nothing you can do to lose me. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, whether you like it or not.”

“I like it,” Irdak said, taken aback at how loud his own voice sounded, as if there was the additional depth of someone else’s in there. “I love it. I love _you_.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes glowed, and his kiss was warm and slow.

“However,” Irdak said breathily when they parted lips again, his voice once again back to just a single-sized one, “I do not approve of you running off on a mission again so soon.”

Obi-Wan shrugged into their embrace. “Until I make it to a Council seat, there’s little I can do about that I'm afraid. They let you in to keep me in, so I’ll have to give them what they want some time.”

“And until then I suggest giving _me_ what I want.”

Obi-Wan’s eyebrow quirked up. “Oh?”

Irdak bared his teeth and tightened his hold on Obi-Wan. “Irdak demands a human sacrifice.”

“The Council might frown on you devouring me whole, love…”

“Ah, but they won’t frown on you worshipping me the way I’m supposed to be worshipped, I’m sure. Just this one night?”

“I’m yours to command.”

Irdak had to stop Obi-Wan from going to his knees - not something he’d ever dreamed of having to do, or wanting to do, but there he was. 

Minutes later, the gentle scratch of Obi-Wan’s beard on his forehead sent full-body shivers down Irdak’s spine as Obi-Wan gently, lovingly, and devastatingly licked and kissed his way around every single one of his horns. Even the vestigial ones.

It was almost enough to make him not register the touch of a hand on his thigh where no hand should be, not with both of Obi-Wan’s fisted in his hair.

Irdak said nothing and deliberately lost himself in the moment, listening to nothing beyond the soft moans coming from Obi-Wan and himself. 

_Just_ himself.

***

As it turned out, ‘just himself’ was poor company indeed. He’d never relished those days, those weeks when Obi-Wan and Anakin were away on offworld missions and he was left to his own devices, but they’d always been at least comfortable, filled as they were with reading, experimental cookery, a few more or less awkward social evenings with colleagues, the occasional long walk in the temple gardens, and plotting what to do to Obi-Wan the minute he walked back in that door.

This time, Irdak felt acutely alone, and not in a good way. As if the lover had been taken away from ‘Now Lover’, leaving only a now that stretched in all directions.

The first night, he’d worried himself to sleep. 

The second, he’d replayed their last encounter, lick by lick, letting the warmth and arousal spread through his entire body without allowing himself to climax. Just like he used to.

The third night, he’d allowed himself to climax, the practiced touch of his own hands feeling almost alien after having been with Obi-Wan for so long. And there it was again, the blue glow at the edge of his vision as he lay panting, eyes screwed shut for fear of whom he’d see.

The fourth night, after having spent most of the rest of the third awake in thought, he’d set out on a mission of his own.

_If I still need orgasm to communicate with you, then so be it._

He would create the perfect conduit. The perfect confluence. It was what he’d been named for. It stood to reason, no? He’d felt the other’s voice vibrating through his own in the moments after climax, had felt the phantom hand on his skin. 

How could it be beyond him, beyond _Incredible Irdak_ , to seduce that spirit inside his body where it could be with Obi-Wan to its heart’s content? (one heart only. He should have no difficulty accommodating its content).

_Reunite the original with the copy. Perhaps he will deign to fill the gaps in my memory too._

The thought made him uncomfortable, but the thought of having to share Obi-Wan with someone whom he, Irdak, could barely reach under normal circumstances made him even more uncomfortable.

_I will have to share myself with you, then, Master Jinn._

He stripped, slowly and purposefully, as if the very air in their deserted bedroom was filled with Master Jinn. Exposed himself to every dancing dust mote, every molecule of stray scent in the air, letting the rude language of his skin fill the void with its ivory and brown, its clean lines, smooth unscarred limbs. _What was your skin like, Master Jinn? Tanned from the rays of a few dozen different suns, scarred in adventure and battle? Soft like mine? Like mine?_

He pulled the tie out of his hair, letting it fall over his shoulders, shaking his head gently to let it settle into its natural flow. _What was your hair like, Master Jinn? Dry, judging from the holos, and greying. Soft, floating in wisps, not hanging in heavy snaking locks. But brown, also. Like mine._

He sat down at the foot of the bed, surveying the landscape of his legs. _No tattoos, I assume. And a little longer. You know about my ancestry, it’s what cost me that extra inch. But you’ll fit in, I’m sure._

Laying back on the bed, he let his hands roam, caressing everywhere that was sensitive. _Everywhere. You’ll have to get used to horns, Master Jinn. But I trust your sense of adventure. My hands aren’t that different from yours, see? Can’t be, not with the way Obi-Wan reacts to them. Your hands are like mine. Well, there’s sword calluses, but… do ghosts even have sword calluses? You tell me, Master Jinn._

His cock jumped at the first touch, twitched hard as he wrapped a firm palm around it. _Not long now. I fear I may be a little smaller here too, but it’s what you do with it, Master. You will not find me lacking, I assure you. I can take you. I can take anything, in this body._

He felt the wave approaching, cresting, crashing. _Come._

//Oh, Irdak. No.//

The was that phantom touch again, fleeting, on his cheek, and it was only when he forced himself to open his eyes again that he felt the trail of wetness the ghosts’s fingers had left behind. Or had that been his eyes? He wiped at the tears angrily, jerking himself upright. _Where is that coward ghost? Call yourself a lover, shunning me like that?_

//but why… child//

The sob was unnaturally loud in the still room, and the dust motes jumped at it. The voice, though, was sadly all Irdak’s own.

_It’s the only way I know to speak to you._

*** 

_Is it some kind of make-believe / Some kind of dream we’re in / With a mint copy of original sin_

The lines from that Jedi poem flickered through his head, barely blotted out by the stim haze. 

It was the good stuff, and it should have hit him like a ton of bricks given how long he’d been abstinent, but for all that the colors around him were otherworldly in their brightness and the music did its best to drown out any rational thought, he couldn’t shake the stupid poetry, or the sense of _lost_ , of _alone_ that he so desperately wanted to leave back in his room at the Temple.

No, it probably hadn’t been a good idea to run to the Sublevels, but it was where his body took him, on autopilot, the one set of memories he had from Before. 

He wouldn’t be able to stay, not here, not within range of Anakin’s abysmal informal spy network, and certainly not in the City. The option of vanishing into the underbelly of Coruscant was denied to you if you were covered in very distinctive tattoos with a set of horns crowning your forehead.

When you were, to all intents and purposes, still Incredible Irdak.

***

That morning at dawn, strung out on stim echoes and no sleep, Irdak couldn’t bear to stop at his quarters. Couldn’t bear to face the empty room, the dancing dust motes mocking him. 

Silently, he slipped into the changing room at the droid shop, slipped into his work overalls a full hour early. Slipped into his corner of the shop and stared at the soldering iron for a full fifteen minutes before pressing it to the ivory of his central crown horn.

The smell made his eyes water. Through the haze of tears, he watched a design form, an echo of his tattoos.

 _I am Other, Master Jinn. I am Irdak_.


	4. Undertow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to tornado_fox for asking all the right questions and keeping me honest as I try to stay upright under the onslaught of Irdak's emotional turmoil.

Being Irdak, it turned out, was part of the problem.

While nobody at the Temple even batted an eyelid at his complete lack of last name or lineage (those to whom the name Irdak meant nothing were usually helped along by descriptions of ‘Master Kenobi’s... partner’, ‘the Zabrak Jinn clone’, or even ‘the dreamy boy down at the droid shop, the one with all the tattoos’), the fact that he wasn’t even a Citizen threw a serious spanner in the works when it came to finding out who exactly he was.

His paper trail started with the day he’d been released from the Jedi Temple’s infirmary and presented to the City’s Social Services office. That, as far as the City was concerned, was also where it ended. They had issued him with the sort of paltry documentation that would be enough to confirm that he didn’t merit deportation, but not enough to confirm he was who he said he was, or indeed that he was anyone specifically.

He had of course asked about his Maker; it had taken him a few weeks to fully digest his only confrontation with her in that filthy storeroom in the Sublevels, but once he’d settled into his new existence the question had bubbled to the forefront of his mind again. And Obi-Wan had obliged with as much information as he could dredge up from his own memory, which wasn’t that much seeing as _he_ had last seen her about twenty years ago and under less than auspicious circumstances too. 

Twenty years ago, Obi-Wan had freed his Master from the clutches of one Jenna Zan Arbor, geneticist extraordinaire and evidently mad scientist revered and feared the galaxy over.

Twenty years ago, Obi-Wan had freed his Master from Zan Arbor’s laboratory. And as Qui-Gon Jinn had limped away from the facility, supported by his bruised but relieved apprentice, he had left behind a part of himself.

The part that would become Irdak.

He had read extensively, in those early weeks at the Temple, about the Zabrak part of his ancestry, about the Four Mothers whose indestructible cell cultures formed the backbone of so many scientific breakthroughs. Whose indestructible cell cultures formed a perfect substrate for midichlorians, which had explained a lot about why in the world Irdak was so hellishly Force-sensitive in the first place. That had been the point apparently.

Horns almost certainly hadn’t, but they came with the package. 

He had even linked up with the City archives once or twice to go through court documents, find out what exactly it was that his Maker had gotten herself arrested and incarcerated for (genocide, it would appear. Multiple instances of. She had sounded less and less appealing the further he read), and, more importantly, where and when all this had taken place. 

None of what he found, however, could help him answer the questions he had about who _he_ was. There hadn’t been any records of Zan Arbor’s experiments with Jedi genetic material, for obvious reasons, and even if there had been, they wouldn’t have told him anything about what he’d been like as the result of these experiments. As a child growing up. As a teenager. 

And his memory continued to be a vast blank, and no amount of Jedi Healer expertise had been able to do anything about that.

All he had to go on from the Before were his tattoos - Zabrak in style but not authentic enough apparently to be accepted by full-bloods - and so he had dropped that line of enquiry eventually and made himself focus on the present, and his potential of a future, here, on Coruscant, with Obi-Wan for a lover and Anakin for a brother and a budding career as a droid mechanic.

Even since then, whenever asked where he was from, he would at least be able to say “I’m from Ventrux”, sometimes even adding “you know, the place where Arbor Industries used to be?”, and even more rarely, “Master Jinn almost got himself killed there once.”

The latter he never offered any more, even in the most genial or drink-fuelled of conversations. Master Jinn had become a sore spot in his mind.

Regardless, the fact remained that the only place he could possibly hope to find any record, trace, or memory of his existence, of who he was, was on Ventrux.

And he had no Citizen identification. No way to get off-planet.

Well, he had no way to get off-planet the _legal_ way.

***

Once he had his mind set on it, somewhere in the middle of the sixth night after Obi-Wan and Anakin had left, things came together with amazing speed and clarity.

He knew only too well after his first adventure that the chances of his annoying Padawan-brother having bugged his boots were rather high - but what Anakin hadn’t factored in was that Irdak had learned quite a bit since then, not least from Anakin himself but also from the eternally grumpy Master Set, she of the spice bun comment. Rigging a circuit to scan for any stray Skywalker tech in his personal belongings had been a matter of half an hour, and had yielded, amazingly, only a single RFID transponder that didn’t belong where it was…

… which was in one of the beads in Irdak’s hair. He had to hand it to the boy.

A judicious blow with the back of the soldering iron took care of that one, leaving him with a slightly deformed but definitely no longer functional bug in his hair. 

Clothing was no problem after that - his work overalls, when worn as intended for once, covered most of his tattoos and had enough pockets to stow a couple of ration bars and a credit chip, and the guilty-pleasure sweater that had been oversized on Obi-Wan covered the distinctive orange part of his work overalls as well as the remainder of his neck tattoo. It was cold in space, he’d heard people at the Temple say, and Obi-Wan’s sweater fit him perfectly. With any luck, he wouldn’t even notice it was gone.

If he managed to hook up to the hyperspace routes in reasonable time, it should take him little more than a day either way. He would be back before Obi-Wan. But if he wasn’t, he didn’t want anyone coming after him. This was _his_ journey, this was his origin story, this was what would supply him the armor and ammunition he would need to face this new Jinn-infested reality that had caught up with him.

He _was_ going to come back - he could not imagine living without Obi-Wan in his veins for any longer than absolutely necessary - but at the same time he was rock-solid certain that he did not want anyone chasing him down until he was ready to return to the Temple with answers. Not even Obi-Wan.

He stared at his face in the mirror, pale and grim, eyes shadowed and red-rimmed, and smiled. In the middle of his forehead stood the cauterized memento of his quest, deep brown grooves and circles burned into his central horn.

Slowly and deliberately, Irdak wrapped the scarf around his head, turban-style, switched off his smile, and became nobody.

***

Getting off-planet had been easier than anticipated, his passage lubricated by smiles and extra credits. His first successful ride had taken him as far as Thesme, within a few hours’ subspace travel of Ventrux, where he’d found himself stranded at a nondescript spaceport as a nondescript traveler with no way to board any transport in any meaningful way.

They were strict about documentation here, and his credit chip was already running perilously low.

_Dathomir,_ he read on the departure board. He’d had no idea his ancestors’ homeworld was this close to where he’d been… made. Then again, it figured. Shop locally, right? Fresh produce. He shook his head. Spending his last few credits on food was probably a better idea than offending one of the officious creatures on duty with too small a bribe. 

And none of them looked like they were at all amenable to the sexual favors of a humanoid, more was the pity. 

That feeling in the pit of his stomach was almost certainly hunger. Not discomfort at sexual contact, surely. He _was_ Incredible Irdak after all, for all that that name meant less than nothing out here. 

It looked increasingly, disconcertingly, like the rest of his journey would involve being cargo.

***

Ventrux welcomed him with the taste of water, wood smoke, and shock.

He had had to stow away inside an actual cargo crate for the last leg of the journey, and finding one that wasn’t packed to the brim had been hard enough. He’d spent the last twenty-eight hours jammed inside a large box filled with elastomer children’s toys, which had been at least compressible enough to yield, grudgingly, to the insertion of over six feet of Irdak among them. It had been a tight fit, and he still wasn’t sure he hadn’t destroyed at least one of this travel companions with his horns, much less permanently damaged some with his bodily waste, but that was a thought for later.

Now, all that mattered was the noise of someone finally, _finally_ , after sun-baked delays and bumpy ground transport rides and endless negotiations over tariffs between disembodied voices, someone finally taking a crowbar to the crate to inspect its contents.

The blows to the far end of the crowbar reverberated around the crate, in time with the throbbing in Irdak’s head. Logically, he knew that he could have survived far worse, but in the moment, he could not remember ever having felt worse, racked with thirst and the overwhelming need to massage feeling back into his aching limbs.

When the bluish gleam of the overhead warehouse lighting hit him, he knew he had the space of a blink to make his move. Muscles screaming and head pounding, he launched himself upward, scattering bouncy toys everywhere, and fell more than leapt to the floor.

It was the scent of water that called to him, and before his eyes had fully readjusted to the brightness or had a chance to come to any reasonable assessment of whether the person at the other end of the crowbar was dangerous, he had ripped the half-full water bottle from the holster on their belt, downed its contents in one long greedy draught, and kissed them so soundly in gratitude that he hoped it would be enough to dissuade them from reporting him to the authorities.

They had tasted like wood smoke, and Irdak had scrambled out of the warehouse and into the twilight before they had fully realized what had hit them.

***

Obi-Wan had a bad feeling about this, and the only reason he hadn’t said as much to his equally exhausted Padawan was that he didn’t think Anakin needed any more bad news right now. Having to beat a hasty retreat from what was supposed to have been a routine diplomatic mission hadn’t sat well with Padawan Skywalker at all, and the arguments they’d had for most of the return journey had sapped what energy Obi-Wan had had left.

They had escaped physically unharmed, with badly bruised egos and the dawning realization that they had just walked blindly into the opening salvo of a full-blown war. 

Obi-Wan had spent the last few hours of their return journey frantically filling in the High Council while Anakin had piloted their shuttle, and the combination of his Padawan’s eccentric flying style and the unsettling implications of those Council communiques, never mind the lack of sleep, had been more than enough to roil Obi-Wan’s stomach.

He was due to brief the Council in person as soon as he had had time to shower, change, and hydrate himself - and yet somehow the anticipation of his familiar quarters was dimmed today, for all that he longed for the feel of a clean set of tunics on freshly scrubbed skin and a steaming mug of tea.

When the door slid open to a perfectly bland set of Jedi accommodations, the diffuse bad feeling that he’d been trying to tamp down bloomed into a sharp, stabbing certainty.

Irdak was indeed not home. Not only that, Irdak was _not there_. No sense of him in the Force. 

And, judging from the messages from Master Set flickering on his comm terminal, he had been gone for days.

***

It wasn’t much of a town to speak of, and Irdak honestly had no idea what a place as dinky as this was planning on doing with a shipment of bouncy toys large enough to hide him in. What he did know was that there was a body of water of sorts that was calling to him, and he frankly did not care if it was intended as a civic water feature or a cattle trough - what mattered was that it was wet and reasonably clean. 

Definitely cleaner than his soiled work overalls, and the light of the planet’s moons (two he could see and a potential third that may just have been a particularly large and insistent star) was enough to work with, but hopefully not enough to alert any stray townsfolk to the presence of a very pale sliver of man immersing first himself and then his clothes in their fountain.

The water was frigid, and it felt alive down his throat as he guzzled down handful after handful. He had to suppress quite a lot of shivers so as to not make too much of a splash, and dunking his face in it was out of the question if he didn’t want to wake the neighborhood up, so he piled his hair on top of his head and went under shoulder-deep at least, as deep as the shallow water would allow, before clambering out, towelling himself down with the scarf, crawling inside Obi-Wan’s sweater as quickly as humanly possible, and then realizing that the only thing to cover his private parts with was the scarf he’d just used as a towel.

He wrung out his overalls as best he could, then shook them out. They might at least serve him as a pitiful shelter against the sun when that came up in a few hours. He’d read about the extreme ultraviolet aspect of Ventrux’ sun during his research and suspected his skin might not have much in the way of natural defenses.

It was going to be a long night. With a cold butt.

***

Anakin knew better than to try to keep up the facade of serenity in the face of what had just happened. Ever the careful Padawan, he remained two steps behind until the door to their quarters had slid shut behind them and Obi-Wan had hurled his robe to the floor and chucked his lightsaber after it.

“Not a priority for the Order! Who do they think they are, sending us into this mire of deception only to turn around and say thanks for the intel, now stand by until we send you back and no, you don’t get to ask about surveillance footage to find out what the fuck happened to your loved one because he’s not a priority for the fucking Order, dismissed!”

Anakin picked up the robe and lightsaber and carefully deposited both on the table, wisely choosing not to interfere.

“Master Set started ringing alarm bells four days ago because it’s unlike him to just not show up to work. But oh no, if he’s not a trained member of the Sithdamned Order he might as well be a piece of garbage for all they care! I mean, have they thought about what it does to _this_ fully-trained and presumably valuable member of their fucking Order to have to worry about what the kid has gotten himself into now?!”

Anakin met Obi-Wan’s gaze briefly, but quickly looked away again, afraid of what was coming next.

“I have half a mind to tell them to stick their next mission up their collective rear ends and go AWOL myself - and Force knows how I’d even be able to achieve that if I didn’t have the Temple’s most devious Padawan who not only bugs the hell out of me sometimes but reliably bugs my boots and whatever part of Irdak he can get hold of…”

“Master.” The earnestness in Anakin’s voice pulled Obi-Wan up short. “Master, the tracking device stopped transmitting. Days ago.”

The curse that followed was quite possibly the most colorful and foul thing Anakin had ever heard coming out of Obi-Wan. “Where was it?” 

“One of the brass hair beads you got him for your anniversary.”

Obi-Wan screwed his eyes shut and covered his face with his hands as if to shut out the images invading his mind from his subconscious. Clothing or equipment being destroyed or lost he could take in his stride, but Irdak’s hair was the last thing he’d part with willingly. Quite possibly the last thing he’d part with before being forced to part with his life. 

The other option, the one that left Irdak alive and well, didn’t bear thinking about, and Obi-Wan didn’t. Not until he’d thoroughly scoured their quarters and found a credit chip and his favorite sweater missing.

The boy had left.

***

Irdak’s stomach was growling as he chewed on the last of the ration bars he’d brought with him, forcing himself to eat it slowly as if that could make it last longer before he’d feel hungry again. 

His supply of credits had run out a while ago, and he couldn’t yet bring himself to try to supplement it by plying his original trade, which he suspected was more promising than trying to be a droid mechanic in a place that wasn’t even using the same alphabet, much less the same voltage as anything he knew how to handle.

Besides, the only trade he’d brought the appropriate tools for was his original one. Said tools of the trade were currently swaddled in still slightly damp work overalls and a sweater that was clearly not made for rugged outdoor wear. His boots, thankfully, were, so at least he wouldn’t have to worry about being immobilized by blisters any time soon.

The locals had assured him that he was on the right track, and moreover, that the right track would provide the means of his survival on account of the season and the fact that the woodlands of the northern continent of Ventrux would be brimming with berries at this time of the solar cycle.

He had lost the right track almost immediately.

There had supposedly been an access road leading to the industrial complex once known as Arbor Industries, but if there was, he hadn’t found it, instead getting hopelessly tangled in the possibility of paths through a forest that could only be described as oppressively colorful.

At knee level, a thick undergrowth of orange and brown ferns robbed him of any idea of where the ground might be; those areas below that level that might have been ground were invariably covered in moldering foliage in varying shades of yellow and red, and to his chagrin, several of the most viable-looking stretches of ground had actually turned out to be stagnant sluggish streams, their surface choked with dead leaves.

Still, at least he wasn’t going to die of thirst.

Above him, a multi-tiered canopy of yellow and orange and piercing green did its best to obscure any clear vision he might have had left. According to the locals’ stories, this forest hadn’t even been there when the facility was still operational, and the thinness of the tree trunks seemed to match that assessment. They had managed to grow to quite staggering height though, pale and mottled skinny stalks that reminded Irdak of nothing so much as his own limbs as he stretched upwards reaching for the scattered bright red berries that the locals had assured him would sustain him throughout his journey.

They tasted agreeable enough, and stained his fingers and lips orange.

_If I eat enough of these I may wind up blending in completely._ The thought filled him with a diffuse sense of dread, the idea of spending even one night in these woods touching a sore spot within him that he hadn’t been aware of. Like a blister on his soul.

Sleeping rough in the town had been an inconvenience, but once he’d managed to get his body reasonably comfortable, he’d drifted off into a dreamless slumber and not woken up until the noise of human activity had roused him in the morning.

Sleeping out here was unimaginable.

He knew he would have to attempt it; continuing to walk without even the indistinct compass of the planet’s piercing but distant sun would be folly. And he knew his body needed the rest after walking all day on little more than a ration bar, some handfuls of berries and all the water he wanted.

As he lay down in a hastily pulled-together nest of bracken and leaves, giving up the last of the horizon to night, Irdak realized with terrifying clarity what it was that had made sleeping here so impossible to attempt. 

For the first time in his life, he was truly alone.

None of the indifferent but comforting townsperson noise as he slept curled up against somebody’s cattle shed. None of the dull thud of the dance music filtering up from the ground floor as he rested his pleasantly wrecked body after a long night’s work at the establishment. None of the distant bustle of a Temple full of sentient beings each on their own little trajectory, weaving a tapestry of Force currents just outside his door.

None of the warmth and solidity of Obi-Wan sleeping next to him.

He hadn’t noticed he’d started crying until he could no longer breathe through his nose and the limp leaves of his makeshift pillow clung to his wet cheeks. 

_Obi-Wan_.

The dark forest echoed his wordless sobs, magnifying them into monstrous moans of reckless abandonment. _What am I doing here? I came here to find myself, and I find I am nobody without anybody._

The ground beneath him felt unstable, as if he’d inadvertently set up camp on one of the stagnant bodies of water masquerading as viable trails, but his limbs would not sink below the surface for all that he felt the currents swirling madly under him, the undertow calling to him. Attempting to set foot in it, much less swim, without his hand in Obi-Wan’s was madness.

_Cracked forgotten statues / we are strangled by the undergrowth / lost in ancient magic we are motion we are wonderful flow_

Oh, the last time those lines had entered his mind felt like years ago and in a different galaxy. Well, it _had_ been a different galaxy. One that had Obi-Wan in it. And Anakin. And Master Set. And the ghost of Master Jinn.

How stupid, how sad. Even the smallest shred of Obi-Wan’s presence was comfort. Even sharing him with all of the Temple, sharing him with Anakin and yes, sharing him with however much of Master Jinn there was at any given time, would still leave Irdak with enough to let him sleep at night.

He was an addict. And he was in withdrawal.

He was a living being. And he was starving.

He was afraid, deadly afraid, that he would never get to feed on Obi-Wan’s presence again, and it made his bones feel like metal. Dark, indescribably heavy and brittle metal.

He hid his face in the bracken, curled into as small a ball as he could, as if making himself smaller would stop the currents from taking him. Willed himself to sleep conjuring up images from his past, the nightly battles for the covers, the solid, beard-scratchy warmth of Obi-Wan grumbling in his embrace before settling deeper into sleep.

Whatever it was that was holding him, he wanted with every fiber of his being to be held, and so he let it, hoping it would let him slip into blissful oblivion.

***

//dark… love?//

The image of Qui-Gon’s face swam into focus as Obi-Wan let himself slip into the Force, its embrace feeling oddly sterile without the warmth of Irdak’s hand in his. Still, he knew how to swim, and he knew where he was headed.

A concerned, blue-tinged face awaited him when he got there.

“Qui-Gon.” It was all he could think of to say, to acknowledge, gratefully, the familiar presence in the Force. 

//You seem distraught, my love.//

Obi-Wan shook his head, sending eddies of spiky cyan energy in all directions. “You’ve seen me worse, I’m sure.”

//It’s not the Council this time though, is it?// The Force smiled asymmetrically all around Obi-Wan. //Or at least that’s not what’s foremost in your mind.//

A gentle tendril of energy probed at Obi-Wan’s forehead, brushing away a stray strand of hair, a stray strand of anger.

“I’m sorry, Qui. I’m just…”

//Loving, Obi-Wan. As I have always known you to be. And directed at someone with more than a bit of passing resemblance.//

Obi-Wan said nothing, trying and failing to mask the frisson of guilt that leached into the Force around him. 

//Obi-Wan. Padawan. Beloved.// The Force was warm, honeyed with the echo of Qui-Gon’s voice, and Obi-Wan couldn’t help but shudder at the sensation. //You are alive. Honor your live body with this. Besides,// and here a faint touch like nails on scalp made Obi-Wan shiver again, //you chose what amounts to a younger, brighter copy of me. How could I judge you?//

“Qui-Gon, I am… I am sorry. I thought I’d lost you.”

//You had. I had lost you too.//

“And now you’re back and… I don’t know what to say.”

//He ran away?//

“He… I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I feel bad even asking you.”

//For help? Obi-Wan. Beloved. Anything to help you feel the happiness you deserve.//

“Happiness…””

//...yes, that includes happiness in the arms of Irdak. Tell me one thing, though… I assume he was Zan Arbor’s creation?//

“Yes.”

A soft exhale, like a mild breeze caressing Obi-Wan’s skin. //He is me, then. Well, partly.//

“What other way would there be for me to fall so helplessly for him?” Obi-Wan replied bitterly. “If I didn’t know better I’d think he was designed specially to lure me.”

//Oh, he was.// Qui-Gon smiled fondly. //She told me as much at the time.// Was that a slight wince in the Force ghost’s features? //To use my genetic material to attract one bonded to my midichlorians. She knew who you were at the time, saw you come back for me and tear me away from her clutches ... but still she had no idea what a formidable force you would grow up to be, my love.//

“So I walked right into the trap.”

//Obi-Wan. Look at me.// If the voice hadn’t done it, the Force touch to Obi-Wan’s eyelids would have. //You followed the Living Force. Irdak is a child of the Living Force. He’s… he’s made for you. Literally.// A pause. //And I’m a little flattered they used such a large part of me in that endeavor.//

“You’re not… not jealous at all?”

The wave of old, soft warmth hit Obi-Wan like a floating blanket. //Seeing you blossom in his embrace is the joy of my wayward existence,// Qui-Gon assured him with a smile. //And seeing him so devoted to you is making me wish I was young and corporeal again. And lastly, but not at all peripherally, he is… well, hot isn’t even beginning to describe it.//

Obi-Wan gaped, his astonishment at his old Master’s crude but accurate assessment coloring the Force bright red.

//What?// He could feel the silvery Jinn smirk glittering on his skin. //I’m only a man after all. Well, a memory of a man anyway.//

“And Irdak is a man with no memory.”

//I’d call that perfectly complementary, wouldn’t you?//

Despite himself, despite his heavy heart, Obi-Wan had to laugh. To have Qui-Gon and Irdak in his life at the same time, just for one day, might well kill him with happiness, but he was going to do his best to achieve that. Or die trying.

***

The stinging rays of the morning sun were already attacking the uncovered bits of his skin by the time Irdak had struggled free of the bonds of sleep - no, wait. This was not sleep paralysis, or the heaviness of a good solid hangover.

This was a thick, white-and-brown-mottled vine curled around his upper arm, in a cruel mimicry of Obi-Wan’s embrace. Irdak jolted awake, terrified. One breath, life returning to his sleep-heavy limbs, blood pounding in his head. The vine held on. Tightened, if that was even possible. 

He reared up, marshalling all his strength to slip out of its clinging embrace, throwing his weight against its elastic but unyielding length, diving for what his terrified mind deemed the only safe space in this forest, a patch of air that appeared neither covered in treacherous orange foliage nor barred by arm-thick vine-trunks -

His world slipped sideways as he found his ankles ripped out from under him, each grasped in an uncompromising grip, each on its own trajectory, suspending his legs in mid-air, in mid-flight, out of reach of arms desperately reaching to strip the clinging vines off him.

He screamed as he felt his head pulled back, vines finding purchase in his hair, lifting his head up, exposing his neck and face to the upper reaches of the forest. Above the bracken, Irdak flew, floated, feared and fought, trapped terrified in what must be a nightmare but refused to give in to the light of the biting sun.

He continued to scream as more vines twined around his body, anchoring him in their wilful embrace, hardening against anything his abused, sleep-heavy muscles could muster. Screamed all that he had voice left to scream with as a vine approached from over his shoulder, scraping along the side of his face, sinuously intent on silencing him, taking his breath away and replacing it with twisted, white-mottled wood, as spotted as the edges of his vision as he drew in frantic breaths, expanding his lungs, his chest, his arms one last time - 

It was only when his screaming stopped, when he’d run out of breath and half-slipped down into the waiting maw of unconsciousness, that he heard a snippet of a gentle, strange voice.

“Fall.”


	5. Maelstrom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art in this chapter by the inimitable tornado_fox/ins0mnia/Dooku_the_Cat who brought these two to life in such an amazing way that I totally stole the sketch to put it up here. I'm told there is a finished version happening at some point too because she's just incredible that way.

“Wake.”

So he hadn’t dreamed it. There was indeed a voice, a strangely reedy-sounding voice leveling words at him, probably in response to his groan as consciousness had returned, reluctantly, to his body.

His head was throbbing, his back ached, and his limbs were still not responding, garbled signals coming from arms, thighs, torso where he was _held_ , tightly but dispassionately. There was no ground touching him anywhere. 

_Right. Vines._

He lifted his head cautiously, hyper-aware of the pull of plant limbs in his hair, and cautiously allowed his eyes to crack open.

Swimming into view was a face, so close to his own that he tried to pull back involuntarily, upsetting the delicate balance of the web of vines holding him captive. He struggled to regain his footing, found none, scrambled frantically to reach any part of himself, any part of the ground, anything really. The vines merely held on.

And the face looked on.

It had eyes, and a nose, and a mouth in imitation of what appeared to be a youngish humanoid. It smiled uncertainly at Irdak’s unreadable expression, and blinked its eyes at him that were the same color as the dark water of the forest streams.

It also appeared to be made entirely of wood.

He could see where it disintegrated around the edges, there where the hairline should be, splintering into layers and fibers and _twigs_ for want of a better word. Twigs that were covered in small yellowish-green shoots, soft teardrop-shaped leaves that hung where he expected hair. 

Between them, and straight through the forehead where it split into fibers and twigs, he could see the forest floor.

He must have gasped at the sight; the voice was back, this time accompanied by a brittle smile and a claw-like hand appearing at the edge of his vision bearing a small cup that looked like it was made from the bark of the same vines that were holding his limbs captive.

Inside, a cloudy yellowish liquid shimmered in the pale morning sun.

“Drink, strange one.” 

The voice was pleasant, perhaps a little awed, and impossible to place in terms of gender. To be honest, Irdak would have been hard pressed to determine whether the… person speaking to him in this voice was even human. They looked like they were attempting to be human. They were also trying to feed him.

His stomach took that opportunity to growl loudly as he tried to get enough leeway in his bonds to bring his mouth closer to the offered cup. The face let out a tiny laugh like rustling leaves, and the hand raised the cup to Irdak’s lips, the tips of its long gnarled fingers brushing against his cheek.

The liquid tasted green, and Irdak was debating giving up questioning how anything could taste green and just giving in to the reality his senses were telling him was there. In which things tasted green and a face made of wood was feeding him despite evidently not having a brain in that skull.

The drink was also bitter, and slimy, and sweet, and Irdak surprised himself by greedily sucking down every last drop of it. It made his tongue feel slightly numb, but the warmth spreading in the pit of his stomach was well worth it.

“What… what is this?” he asked cautiously, awareness dawning that he might just have poisoned himself irrevocably. Still, it was not like he had a choice, the waters of the forest being out of reach of his suspended limbs.

“Sap,” the voice said simply. “Makes us live.”

Irdak could have sworn they’d put the cup down somewhere but he could not crane his neck far enough to see where. Then again, given the weird appearance of their face, it was entirely possible they’d just unfurled the cup back into a strip of bark and reintegrated it into their bewildering anatomy. _Did I just drink a tree person’s blood?_

Ah yes. Thinking apparently still worked. His senses were also beginning to reawaken, possibly fueled by his admittedly eerie breakfast. He drew a deep breath, as deep as he could given the constriction of vines around his chest, and flexed his hands as if to ensure they were still attached to the ends of his arms, for all that they weren’t going anywhere in his present state.

“Thank you… I think,” he said softly. “Who are you that you care about me?”

“I,” the voice from somewhere in that smooth wooden face said. “And you?”

Irdak blinked. “You haven’t got a name?”

“I need one?” The voice sounded vaguely amused.

“No, no, it’s just… I didn’t have one until about a year and a half ago either. When someone came and named me.” He shook his head, as much as the vines would allow, and his vision jittered a little. What had been in that sap?

“Named you what?” the interested face asked.

“Irdak,” he replied. “That’s my name now. It means ‘confluence’ - like two streams coming together?”

“ _Irdak_ ,” the creature repeated softly, tracing an invisible outline in the air with their twig fingers. “Not streams. Big storms.”

Irdak let out a harsh breath. “They seem to follow me.”

“Follow,” was the soft response. “From where?”

“You can tell, can’t you, that I’m not from around here.” Irdak laughed bitterly, attempting a shrug against the constricting vines. “I came from a place called Coruscant, although I couldn’t tell you who named that one, stranger.”

The face tilted slightly, leaf-hair rustling. “Name me?”

“Name you? Oof.” Even with ground under his feet, Irdak would have been out of his depth. He surveyed the strange creature standing so close to him, filing his field of vision with their gentle eerie presence. The general bark-ness, wood-ness, tree-ness continued down their body, though he couldn’t tell how much of an approximation of human anatomy there really was. How much of what he saw was clothing or adornment and how much of it was integral to the creature’s being.

Well, the furs that were woven into their general outline probably counted as adornment seeing as they’d probably started life as someone else’s skin. 

Unbidden, an image bubbled to the surface of his mind of ivory and brown patterns mingling with the mottled bark and smooth wood of the creature’s body, and he had to push down hard against the spike of terror at the possibility of losing his skin to a stranger, here, in this Force-forsaken forest.

The vine tip that had been resting against his collarbone twitched awake and slithered up to lay around the base of his throat. He swallowed, memories of being collared brushing against his mind. _The first time around, that had been the beginning of his life. The second time, almost the end. Now…?_

“You move them,” the voice said. Was that something like awe in its tone? “Strong.”

“ _I_ move them?” He attempted to shake his head but found that had become impossible since his last bout of struggling. “I don’t seem to be able to get them off of me.”

“They hold you. You let go, you fall.”

A deep exhale. “You make that sound so easy. Where I come from, falling is a bad word. A scary thing. Falling is what you do when you… give in to the Dark Side. Well, that’s how the Jedi put it anyway.”

“Jedi.” The word echoed in the reedy voice. “They your people?”

“Yes.” _The only people I have left, wherever they may be_ , he thought forlornly.

“Fall,” the creature insisted gently. “Not scary. Ground catches you.”

Irdak wanted to say a million things to that, not least about how in this infernal place, what looked like the ground occasionally turned out to be water. How he was afraid to fall, and how ironic that was because fear, at least according to what he had heard Obi-Wan teach Anakin, was what led to falling to the Dark Side. How he was not sure at all any more what the Dark Side even was, and how deep into it he might already be.

He said none of those things. He fixed his gaze on those mild, bracken-water eyes and let himself be taken by the current.

The vines loosened as if controlled by a mind he couldn’t fathom, and Irdak tumbled to the ground in a heap. Gratefully, he dug his fingers into the wet orange leaves covering it, feeling the soil underneath.

“You make roots?” The creature sounded amused. “Stay here?”

A small bitter laugh escaped Irdak. “Not if I can help it. I’m way out of my depth here.”

“You fall, but not to depth. Not dark here.”

“I suppose,” Irdak agreed, sitting down gingerly on the still-solid ground, hugging himself. He felt strangely exposed out of the grip of those vines, and only now realized that they had reduced Obi-Wan’s sweater to shreds in their attempt at ‘holding him’. He shivered a little, grateful that he had kept the top half of his overalls tied around his waist. It would come in handy now, and he busied himself untying the sleeves and wiggling into it. The zipper was destroyed and wouldn’t close all the way but it would do for any further social encounters. He was a little proud of himself for his continued ability to have such mundane thoughts in the face of… all this.

The face looked back at him quizzically, and Irdak couldn’t help but give in to the laugh that splashed in his throat like a small wave.

“I have a name for you,” Irdak said. “I will call you All This. You know, in the face of all this?”

The watery eyes crinkled, and the hairline sprouted a few extra leaves. From the depths of All This’ body, another bark cup appeared, and this time Irdak took it with both hands.

“Drink to All This,” the voice said, a glow of satisfaction suffusing it with gold. 

Warmth spread in Irdak’s stomach again, and his tongue went pleasantly numb. “Not dark here,” he repeated slowly, careful to enunciate against the thickness in his mouth.

“Not dark here,” All This agreed firmly. “Dark there.” A gnarled arm unfurled in the general direction that Irdak thought he had been traveling when he’d bedded down for the night. North, away from the sun. 

“Dark there?,” he hazarded. “Just my luck that’s where I’m going. The abandoned Arbor Industries buildings, I assume? Sith.”

“Sith,” All This agreed, although Irdak didn’t believe for a moment they had any idea what that word meant. “Dark buildings,” they continued. “Why go there?”

Irdak rubbed his forehead, feeling suddenly, inexplicably thirsty.

“I was born there.” 

***

All This had steadfastly refused to go any closer, and had melted back into the forest as soon as Irdak had reliably set eyes on the laboratory building. In the light of day, filtering through the high cloud cover and the scattered overgrown trees, it was actually much smaller than he had imagined, a sprawling single-storey building with a flat roof and a row of windows running around all sides of it as far as he could see.

As far as he could see, the windows had all been smashed. From what he had read, the facility had been raided by law enforcement some ten years ago and abandoned in a hurry following Jenna Zan Arbor’s arrest. Scientists must have been the first to vanish, taking their treasured equipment and data with them, quickly followed by administrative and janitorial staff and then blending seamlessly into the local population picking over what was left.

What was left had been exposed to the whims of nature for the better part of ten years. 

It had taken him a while to get accustomed to the fractured low light that filtered in through the windows, all of them either smashed or overgrown or blinded with age and dirt. Where the sun did filter in, the light was eerie, milky and cool, tempered only slightly by the greenish mottled tint of the walls that were slowly giving up whatever shade of paint they had held on to for most of their useful life and succumbing to mold and moss.

The floor was littered with fallen ceiling tiles, broken glassware, unrecognizable debris that may once have been furniture or equipment or files but now was just random piles of obstacles, all turning the same despondent shade of gray under the growing layer of dust that covered them. 

Irdak was acutely grateful that his work boots had made it this far; the crunch of glass under his feet at every step, no matter how cautiously taken, was sickening but it was utterly impossible to cut a path through the labyrinth of debris without stepping on something. 

The underground level had turned out to be filled entirely with water so he had concentrated his exploration on the ground floor, unsure of what to look for in the silent cacophony of decay.

The looters had been thorough - any electrical or data equipment had been gutted for parts or ripped wholesale from its location, leaving only naked wires and shadows hanging on the discolored walls. What meager paper records there may have been had been reduced to fluttering cinders by a fire that had engulfed most of the main wing of the ground floor an unknown amount of time ago, and what little paper he was able to find among the drifts of debris in the remainder of the building had been so insipid and prefabricated that he hadn’t even considered putting any of it in his pockets for further research. 

As he stared uncomprehendingly at a pamphlet that exactly matched a stack of similar ones buried under the remains of a desk but failing to match any writing system Irdak had been taught to read, he realized that even if there had been any files surviving, even if he had been in a position to rifle through and _read_ every single word of them, he had very little idea of what he would have been looking for in them. 

What would he have been recorded as? He hadn’t been Irdak then. He had a vague idea of his age but none at all of what he would have been to them, to the shadowy denizens of Arbor Industries. 

To those who made him.

His hearts sank with the realization that this entire madcap journey had been ridiculously unlikely to be a success from the start. There was nothing left for him here, and even if there was, how would he know it was _for him_ when he had nothing to go on beyond what he was in the here and now.

_Completely different people_ , his mind supplied. _That_ was his memory now. Weird Jedi poetry, recited by the one he loved. From a book owned by the one _he_ had loved. 

Completely different people.

What was he doing here? There was nothing here for him. Nothing here _of_ him. Nothing that was likely to connect who he was now - Irdak, beloved, idiotic, half-undressed, hungry, hearts-full - to who he may have been then. Back when he was Made. As whoever they may have called him then.

There was nothing here for him, not in the still, dust-covered, glass-strewn echoes of what had once, supposedly, been his home.

Except… there was the dark water again.

The flooded basement. Too much of an embodiment of the dark turbulent waters of his Force sense to allow himself to leave this place for good without at least casting a cursory glance down the dank steps that led down there, through a door that had been warped open in the fire that had engulfed most of that side of the building. The writing on it was pockmarked and indecipherable but had once been lurid with high contrast, the visual equivalent of shouting at you not to enter. 

He shouldered open the door wide enough to squeeze through and cautiously let himself slip into the waist-deep brownish water. It smelled metallic, with an oily sheen on it in patches where the light hit it; what had once been well-engineered skylights channeling daylight into this underground level had quickly turned into floodgates once the building was abandoned, and years of stagnant water had eaten away at anything decipherable or organic. 

Still, that meant nobody beyond the first round of looters had likely set foot in here since the building had been abandoned, and only the water had had its way with the contents of the rooms. 

Peering into room after room as the cold brown water enveloped him from the waist down, Irdak found it impossible to imagine anyone living here. Imagining anything in here was hard, the vast body of cold acidic water more than a mere metaphor for what was going on in his mind. 

He saw only destruction in the haphazard shafts of thin light: rusted metal skeletons of furniture, a couch maybe. The remains of a filing cabinet, a toppled bunk bed. 

Had this been home? He could not for the life of him imagine a child living here. Living here and coming out as… the one he had found himself to be when he woke up in the Temple’s infirmary.

This was beyond oppressive, the stripped condensed bones of a past that was no longer there, if it had ever been, and he a man who was no longer anyone, alone, strung out on hunger and tree sap, also reduced to his bare bones, just like the things in these rooms.

The place was so, so silent, his movements in the water the only sound. So silent that his ears were starting to fill in the missing sonic landscape of their own accord. Echoes rose from the oily water, the sounds of distant voices, bustling and clinking of glassware, shouting. None of it was real, he knew that… but that also meant none of it could be shut out by pressing his hands over his ears. 

The shouting and crashing of glass simply went on inside his head.

Only one door remained, and he knew he owed it to himself - whoever he was, here - to at least glance at what was beyond it before taking what was left of his sanity and abandoning this mission.

It took all his weight to get that last door to move, and when it did it gave way completely and collapsed inwards, taking part of the door frame with it and letting a dirty, slanted beam of daylight illuminate the scene of destruction. 

The metal shelving that had once lined the length of the room had collapsed, eaten away by rust, and a giant storage freezer had been overturned by he knew not what, its erstwhile contents smashed, scattered, and dissolved in the murky water.

Floating directly in front of him, its lid missing and its top cracked open in jagged shards, a specimen jar bobbed on the disturbed water, its contents long since rotted and dried into a small collapsed heap. In the greyish light, Irdak was just able to make out a partial skull, its triangular face oddly stretched but smooth. 

A skull that had never had a top or back to it.

He’d taken a step forward towards the tiny dead face already when he realized, with horror, that the sound he had just heard was real, loud over the rushing of voices in his head, and that he had just stepped on… he had bent down, immersed himself in the dark water before he'd had time to formulate a clear thought because the noise in his head was making it very hard to hold on to thoughts above the water, and the water itself was calling to him like the maelstrom that he knew only too well not to enter without Obi-Wan’s hand in his own. 

His hand was scrabbling blindly on the floor while his other clamped around the side of his head in a vain attempt to drown out the noise. Under the water would be quiet, he knew. Under the water where _they_ were…

When he found the strength to raise himself up again, to unclamp the hand that was streaming water and mud and now, thanks to some shards of broken glass in the handful of debris, thin trails of blood, he stared blindly at what he was holding.

There was glass, yes. There was rust-eaten metal and muck. There was, unmistakable and bright white, a tiny pair of forearm bones, still attached to each other. Bones of someone who had never made it to birth weight, whatever that might mean when one was not even growing inside another’s body. There was also a small curved fragment of bone with the tiny but unmistakable stub of a horn.

The screeching in Irdak’s head rose to a level that transcended noise and bled right into sheer pain, the dark water calling to him to immerse himself, to let himself dissolve like they had been.

His siblings who had never seen life.

And here he was, screaming in his own pain, the pain of one who had lived, one who would not dissolve, stubbornly still here, stubbornly still _someone_ even though he no longer knew who, or what, or why.

Someone had named him, someone had made him real, real enough to not dissolve in the waters, real enough to bang his head against the wall, solid bone against solid concrete, the pounding of one who survived, who was stubbornly still here, still alive, still remembered somewhere, because he had been given a name, hadn’t he?

_Irdak_. 

Dimly, he felt one of his horns give way, heard the crack reverberate inside his head, heard the sad little plop as it sank in the brown water to join the bones of the others. Hammered his fists into the wall, overcome with grief and anger and terror at who he was, where he was, at how alone he was.

One horn in the water. A shrieking, halting stream of tears to follow. And yet, not enough to dissolve him, to allow him to flow into the maelstrom as his name with all its preposterous promise seemed to demand.

_Irdak._

If only he hadn’t left them all behind. If only Obi-Wan could hear him. Reach out a hand to help him stay afloat as he so readily would. If only - 

//Irdak//

A hand. _Obi-Wan!_

//...take mine?//

The hand - there was a hand, dim and pale but brighter than the threadbare beam of light in the room he was in, and the hand was so exactly like his own that Irdak was sure that it would be the last thing he would see before his mind would be sucked down the maelstrom, clinging to nothing but a shadow of his former self - 

There was blue, and green, and indigo. Currents opened up, flooding the dank room, washing away the fear on raw insistent waves. He was going under, losing his footing, floating away - 

… and yet the hand was still there. He opened his eyes again, incredulous at the sight of an exact copy of his own hand holding him, mild and pale in the death grip of his own fingers. Blue.

Numbly, he let his gaze travel up past the wrist. This was not his arm.

These were not his shoulders. This was not his hair. Nor was it Obi-Wan’s, although the resemblance was there, floating somewhere between his hair and Obi-Wan’s. This was not his smile, not his eyes. These were far bluer and edged with little lines that spiked at the corners of his vision like tiny rays of light.

Stripped bare and unresisting, unable to form words, Irdak simply held on as the currents bore him up and out, through the ceiling, towards the light in those eyes, eyes that were too much like his own to bear.

Something in the back of his mind remembered who he was looking at. Something deep in every cell of his body sang with it. Nothing in his mouth could bring itself to say his name. His father’s name. His… original’s name. 

His lifeline.

//Irdak. Stay with me please. We need you to stay alive, Irdak.//

“... I can see you…”

//Good.// From somewhere, another hand appeared and reached for Irdak’s unresisting one, then pulled him into an embrace larger than the world could hold. //I am glad of it.//

Something in that voice, something in how _familiar_ it sounded even though Irdak had never met the man in life broke through the din in his ears, pierced a hole in it and let it all rush out on a tidal wave of great racking sobs.

“... you came for me… how in hell did you find me?”

Irdak felt one of the hands rest high on his back, and a pulse of light electrified his hearts at the touch.

//You are part me, remember?// 

Was that amusement in that voice? Irdak screwed his eyes shut, wiping his eyes on Qui-Gon’s shoulder like a baby, unwilling to let go of the embrace.

“You came back for _me_? You could have had him to yourself!”

Oh, there it was. One of those hands tipped Irdak’s chin up, and the touch was surprisingly real, not the fleeting ghost touch he had felt before in the brief moments after sex when the night opened up to him and the currents carried. 

“I can feel you,” he added forlornly. “Am I dead?”

//No, child.// The warmth in those crinkly blue eyes was intoxicating, like a concentrated essence of All This’ sap. //You are more alive than I have ever seen you. And it’s good to see you, Irdak.//

“Qui-Gon.” The name felt strange on his tongue. “Father, I suppose?”

//Only if you insist.// There was that lopsided smile again. //I fear I would not make good parent material, actually. And I am most certainly not going to keep you away from Obi-Wan.//

“The love of your life.”

//And yours. We are alike in many things, it would seem.//

“What… what’s it like?”

//The Force? You’re looking at it.// That little snort, Irdak had felt that on his face. Did ghosts even breathe? //Preferable to being dead, certainly. Wouldn’t recommend it over being alive, though.//

“I… I’m sorry I… tried to...” The tears were threatening to spill over again, and Irdak gratefully curled into the hug of those arms that were so like his own and yet not. 

//I’m sorry too, Irdak. I couldn’t get through to you, and when I did… it wasn’t supposed to be like that.//

“Not like being asked to make love to your own child, you mean?” Bitter amusement tinged Irdak’s voice, and he let it flow through him and out of him, down and away with the blue and the green and the indigo. “Sorry. That sounded crude.”

//Oh Irdak. Loving you is like loving myself. Not something I can help doing at this point.// An eloquent blue shrug rocked Irdak’s face gently where it lay buried against the side of Qui-Gon’s neck. //You’re stuck with me I’m afraid. Me and Obi-Wan both.//

“How will I _ever_ survive?” The theatrical sigh made Qui-Gon grin and tighten his hug. It felt fantastic, Irdak’s body cautiously coming back alive, energy zinging up and down his nerves as if that blue light had found a way inside his bloodstream. Which, in all probability, it had, Qui-Gon’s Force bugs being copies of his own.

Not copies. _Originals_.

//You’ll find a way. You’ve made it this far, Incredible Irdak.//

He winced slightly at hearing his old nickname from Qui-Gon’s mouth. “That’s a thing of the past, I think.”

//Not if you listen to Obi-Wan.//

“He… is he okay?”

//He will be once we get you back home. And preferably wrapped around every part of him. The poor man needs more than just a hug.//

Was that a smirk? “All of me,” Irdak swore. “He can have all of me, until there’s nothing left.”

//I will be sure to let him know.//

“You… you can talk to him? Now?” Irdak gaped, the possibilities that were opening up as boundless as the Force.

//The Force is with me, Irdak. In a way, it _is_ me. And it’s everywhere.//

Irdak groaned. “What you’re saying, Master Jinn, is that I will never have privacy in the bedroom ever again?!”

Blue laughter eddied brightly all around him. //I’m beginning to see why he calls you Insufferable Irdak.//

“Don’t act so surprised, old man. I’m mostly you after all.”

//I am not old.//

“You’re _dead_ , Qui-Gon. And wishing you had my young hot body to wreck Obi-Wan with.” He was babbling and he knew it, but the wave of relief and giddy reckless joy was impossible not to ride out. Noth with Jinn giving as good as he got.

//In more ways than one, I do.// Another wave of warmth flickered up his spine and made his hearts beat in unison. //And yes, Irdak, you are beautiful. Forgive an old man for wanting to watch you two in action?//

“Always. Not sure he could handle the both of us anyway.” Irdak’s hearts were brimming with relief and longing and pure raw love, and he knew that Qui-Gon knew, looking into his eyes. They were the same eyes after all.

//Obi-Wan? You’d be surprised at what he can take, my boy.//

The laughter that bubbled up from deep within Irdak was still a little wet, but it tasted sweet, of promise and acceptance and love.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this but I may have to use the words ‘horny bastard’ on you right now, Master Jinn.”

//You have a point. Or two and a half.// Ghost fingers traced the stub of his broken horn. //Looks dashing.//

“Shut up and go tell Obi-Wan I love him, and that I’m coming home.”

//Yes, Master.//


	6. Wellspring

**Distance from birthplace: 1 kilometer**

Irdak had no memory of how he’d made it out of the flooded basement, or the building, or the gravitational pull of the abandoned lab complex. That, all told, was not a bad thing.

Curled up naked under a pile of leaves, under the watchful eye of All This, with his remaining clothes draped over a tree branch to dry after a thorough soak in the nearest stream, his tongue heavy and his belly full of the warm glow of All This’ sap, he allowed himself to drift off into a dreamless sleep.

Qui-Gon would surely wake him if he needed to.

***

**Distance from birthplace: 100 kilometers**

“Hey, you’re supposed to be fixin’ my deep fryer! What the heck are you doin’ out here flirtin’ with my customers?” 

The thunderous look on Big Rek’s features would have been apt to scare away lesser mechanics, and the shade of pink on her face was outshone only by the garish sign announcing Big Rek’s On-The-Go Empire to anyone willing to look up as they passed through the backwater spaceport of Del Allid on the northern continent of Ventrux. 

Anyone willing to put up with the smells of Big Rek’s cooking, that was.

“Just waiting for it to come back up to operating temperature,” Irdak replied sweetly. “And the gentlebeing on Table 12 would like another of those greenish things that you do.”

Big Rek grumbled something unintelligible and almost certainly nothing to do with how the strange boy had just managed to sell one of her more expensive alcoholic concoctions to a being that would almost certainly not be able to handle a second one. She made a mental note to run the gentlebeing’s credit chip before they forgot where up and where down was, then dredged up a rare smile from the bottom of her repertoire of facial expressions and leveled it at Irdak.

“You fixed it already? Why do I pay the idiots from Maintenance, is what I wanna know… that _and_ the conveyor? Best deal of the year, I tell ya.”

Irdak raised an eyebrow. “Any meal off your menu plus soft drinks, for free, that’s the deal. Right?”

“Sure.”

“Though I have a favor to ask…”

“What?” The smile had vanished, and the usual wary expression was back on Big Rek’s face.

“Can you just… fail to run the last security sweep tonight and accidentally leave me locked in the terminal building tonight? I don’t really have anywhere to sleep tonight and I’m out of credits for a hotel room.”

Big Rek’s expression softened. “You got it. In front of the dishwasher’s a good place if ya ask me. Warm.”

“I promise I’ll be gone in the morning. And, uh, nothing else will be.”

Big Rek sighed. “You sure I can’t persuade you to stick around for a bit longer?”

“No possible way. I have to get myself home.” The shimmer in the boy’s eyes at that word spoke of feelings Big Rek hadn’t encountered in one so young in a long time.

“Where’s home anyway?” she asked gruffly. “Dathomir?”

A brittle laugh. “Would you believe me if I told you I was a local lad, born and raised here?”

“Never. You’re a freakin’ Zabrak. I mean, look at ya.” She gestured perfunctorily at the horns, at the tattoos barely concealed by the work overalls with their busted zipper.

“Yeah, thought you wouldn’t buy that one. Anyway, it was nice meeting you.”

“Tell your folks, wherever you’re really from, that we could do with a couple more of you around here.”

“Will do.”

***

The dishwasher’s hum, it turned out, was helpful in letting him sink into what he hoped would be enough of a meditation to let Qui-Gon come through. He was still on very shaky ground when it came to the Force, but since his encounter in the flooded cellar of his birthplace, it had lost some of its menace. _There was a hand there now_.

//… irdak //

“Here.” The voice was faint but without Obi-Wan present, Irdak had little chance of deepening the connection with the Force. Well, short of masturbating on the floor of a dinky spaceport diner and hoping against hope that would do anything. 

“It’s good to see you. Well, hear you. Something like that.”

//...i-Wan is so reliev... //

“Gods, I can’t even imagine... he’d be well within his rights to knock me out when he sees me again.” He sighed. “Anyway, so he’ll have me. Good. Fuck, yes.” The weight that lifted off his shoulders at those garbled words from Qui-Gon was immeasurable, and the voice got a little closer, a little stronger as a result.

//...he’s heading home himself to meet you.//

“Yes.” The simple joy in Irdak’s voice made the single syllable glow like a star in the darkened diner kitchen. “I should only be another day or two. I feel bad for having to take out the entire booking system but… paper records are so much easier to tamper with.” He shrugged. “And it beats selling my body to get a ticket.”

//Ever the resourceful tinkerer. Anakin would be proud of you, I’m sure.//

“If he’d had anything to do with it, I would be hacking my way _into_ the system rather than taking out its physical data storage module. Anyway, since I’m not up to Jedi mind tricks yet -”

//and I’m not powerful enough to create a diversion on your behalf, more’s the pity//

“...this will have to do. You might have to help me out with a surname though. For the flight manifest? I still haven’t got one.”

//Take your pick, Irdak. I trust your judgment.//

***

The flight was severely delayed, as was to be expected after a mysterious sitewide outage to the booking system and everyone grumpily falling back on what paper records they had to hand. Comm units were buzzing up a storm, lines were long, and the passengers’ tiredness was eclipsed only by the tiredness of the gate agents handling check-in.

“Name?”

“Jinnobi. Irdak.”

“With a J?”

“Indeed.” He resisted the urge to point at the precise spot where he’d added his name to the bottom of the manifest mere hours ago. Not in alphabetical order but what could you do.

“Aaah, here you are. ID please?”

The ID card was a pitiful forgery, helped along marginally by the fact that the ID reader device had also been taken offline by the mysterious outage and that the gate agent was likely not being paid enough to get out the arm-thick reference book of intergalactic identification documents from somewhere in the back.

Mostly, it was being helped along massively by a slight modification to the gate agent’s chair that Irdak had spent the rest of the small hours on, because he loved tinkering, and didn’t see how his new profession should be any less pleasurable to his clients than his original one.

“Tha-ank you.”

The slight squeak in the gate agent’s voice was most satisfying, and the unsteady smile spoke volumes about how he had not expected his ergonomically pitiful spaceport-provided seat to _vibrate_. Just right.

“Have a good flight,” the gate agent added somewhat breathlessly, and Irdak regaled him with his best droid-service smile. 

He was going home.

***

**Distance from birthplace: immaterial**   
**Distance from home: 100 meters and shrinking fast**

The noise, bustle, and offensively commercial cheerfulness of Coruscant’s central spaceport was notorious for intimidating offworld visitors, and the incessant synthesized melodies of its gambling booths had been written up in so many travelogues they had become synonymous with the experience of touching down at the galaxy’s shimmering hub.

He hadn’t paid them any heed the first time he’d passed through the spaceport, and he noticed them even less now.

All that mattered was the human-sized nexus of energy at the far end of the concourse, and Irdak broke into a run as soon as his feet hit carpet.

He knew he wasn’t the boy who had run away what felt like years ago - he had lost weight, his clothes were mangled or destroyed, one horn shattered, and the shadows under his eyes were probably pronounced enough to be visible even through his inhumanly opaque skin.

He knew there would be fussing, there would be fights over going to see the Healers, there would be Words, and Apologies, and Confessions. There would be _reports_. He hoped there would be a bath.

Everything he knew faded from his mind at the sight of the small sun that was Obi-Wan’s presence, his hearts full to overflowing as he drowned himself in the light, wrapped himself in the scent of Obi-Wan’s robe, the roughness of his beard, the welcome solidity of his arms.

He was home. Hearts full, mind empty, body shutting down at the overload of it all. Dimly, he felt arms holding him up. From behind him.

//I’ve got him, Padawan.//

“Thank you.” Obi-Wan’s voice was less than steady too. “Irdak.” A hand reached for his chin, and the touch lit him up from within. “Can you walk?”

“Obi-Wan… I can _fly_ if you need me to.”

The laugh that crinkled the corners of Obi-Wan’s eyes squished a pair of tears down the Jedi Master’s cheeks. It was a good look on him, Irdak decided, and he made a superhuman effort to kiss at least one of them away, humming appreciatively at the taste of salt and Obi-Wan.

“Force, you taste good. I’m never leaving again.”

“Good.” No, this was not quite the Stern Master Voice, but Irdak knew he had heard that tone before, usually leveled at Anakin. “We’re going to have to make sure you don’t get out of my orbit then.”

Irdak felt his lips stretch into a smile. “Chain me to the bed, maybe?”

Obi-Wan snorted, tightening his hold on Irdak. “I was thinking more along the lines of getting you proper documentation so that we can send law enforcement after you next time,” he said drily. “You can start thinking of a surname for your paperwork right now if you like, young man.”

“Don’t need one any more. Gave myself one on the last leg of the trip. Only fair that I get to name me too sometimes.”

Yes, he sounded like he was drunk. In all honesty, he was. Having Obi-Wan’s arms around him and the echo of Qui-Gon’s arms around both of them was not conducive to staying an upright Citizen in any version of reality.

The blue glow in his mind intensified, as if Qui-Gon, being everywhere as he was, had been in on the joke since the name had first appeared on a flight manifest somewhere on a desk on Ventrux.

The blue glow that, all told, was the thread that was holding the patchwork of his found family together, in the here and now.

“All your fault, Qui-Gon. _All_ your fault.” Yes, still sounding drunk. And the interruption, when it came, was much more of a seamless blend of corporeal voice into incorporeal than the sound of two individuals talking.

//Irdak Jinnobi? Shut up and kiss him.//


End file.
